ewis is a
nice boy?" she inquired. "I didn't like him at first, because he has
such a white face and hardly any eyebrows!"

"What a silly reason for not liking a person," said Madge. "As if they
could help their eyebrows!"

"I know it's silly," returned Betty humbly. "But don't you find it
very difficult to like people when they have nasty faces?"

"I never think about their faces," said Madge in a superior way. "If
they are jolly I like them soon enough, however ugly they are!"

"Oh, so do I!" exclaimed Betty, now rather ashamed of her criticisms as
she found that Madge considered them silly. "At first I thought he was
going to be rather proud and stuck-up because he was so much older than
we are, but afterwards he seemed very nice when we began to play. I
wonder if we shall ever see him again?"

"I'm sure I don't know! Let us go to sleep now, I'm tired of talking;"
and Madge burrowed so deeply under the bed-clothes that it was quite
impossible to carry on any sort of conversation with her.

Perhaps it was because Madge went to sleep rather early that evening
that she was enabled to wake proportionately early the following
morning. It was fairly light and fine, though not sunny. She got out
of bed and went to the window. Madge invariably looked out of the
window the first thing in the morning, but to-day she was rewarded by
seeing something that had never met her eyes before.

On the lawn, directly in front of the house, was a large flower-bed,
containing many roses of different colours. They were Mrs. West's
favourite flowers, and even when she could not go out, she enjoyed
seeing them from the drawing-room window. In the middle of this
flower-bed now stood Jack and Jill, cropping off and devouring dozens
of rose-buds with evident relish.

Madge rubbed her eyes and looked again. It was no dream, and there was
no possibility of a mistake. She had seen the goats safely shut into
the calves' house the night before, and here they were loose and
walking about the garden. She could not understand in the least how it
had happened; but nevertheless it was a fact. And, moreover, they were
eating her mother's favourite roses as fast as they could. She tapped
gently on the window-pane, but the goats took absolutely no notice. At
this rate there would not be a rose left by the time the gardener came
to work.

A great idea occurred to Madge. We know that she was rather
independent, as befitted the eld