rning adventure. Mary and the little
boys were playing in the old wagon that stood in the barnyard. She
could hear them laughing and shouting. The old pig was grunting over
his trough, the hens were cackling. She really ought to go and gather
the eggs. She felt just then that drying dishes was an insupportable
burden. It was always so with Elizabeth. She could toil strenuously
all day, building a playhouse, or engineering a new game, running,
leaping, toiling all unwearied. But when household duties were laid
upon her, except when she worked for Mother MacAllister, she was
actually overcome with physical weariness. She leaned against the
table and yawned aloud.

"Oh, Sarah Emily, don't you hate dishes?" she groaned. "We've got such
stacks of them."

But Sarah Emily did not hear. Tom Teeter was standing down there
between the rows of cabbages, talking to Mr. Gordon upon the
"Conscienceless greed and onmitigated rapacity" of certain emissaries
of the opposing political party. To all of which his neighbor was
responding with: "Well, well. Deary me, now, Tom."

But Sarah Emily was firmly convinced that Tom was there for other
reasons than to talk politics with her master. Sarah Emily was neither
fair of face nor graceful of form, neither had a suitor ever been seen
to approach the Gordon kitchen; nevertheless, she lived in the pleasant
delusion that all the young men of the countryside were dying for love
of her. Tom Teeter's condition she believed to be the most hopeless;
and, like all other proud belles sure of their power, she flouted him;
and the innocent young man, when he thought about her at all, wondered
why Sarah Emily disliked him so, and took considerable pleasure in
teasing her.

So Sarah Emily made frequent excursions to and from the well as he
stood in the garden. She sang loudly and pretended she saw no one.

"_The 'first that came courting was young farmer Green,
As fine a young gent as ever was seen._"

"Oh, Sarah Emily, I'm awfully tired," said Elizabeth, when the young
woman had at last settled to washing the dishes. "Don't you 'spose you
could do them yourself this time. I really ought to go and help Malc
and John with the hen-house."

"No, I don't, you lazy trollop," responded Sarah Emily promptly. "You
don't seem to think I ever get tired, an' me with that pinny of yours
to iron for Sunday, too!"

Elizabeth was immediately seized with compunction. She caught up the
to