nsidered himself the head of
the family, and his feelings were continually ruffled by Mehitabel's
decided way of settling things without regard to his opinion. The
mornings were the hardest of all, when, in their mother's absence, the
children recited their lessons to Miss Higginson. Mehitabel had her
own ideas about the law and order that should be maintained, and
Stevie's indignant protests were quite wasted on her.

"You may do as you please when your pa and ma are home"--she said very
decidedly one morning, when Kate and Stevie told her that their mamma
never expected them to stand through all the lessons nor to repeat
every word as it was in the book--"but when I'm head of the family
you've got to do things my way, and I want every word of that lesson."

"You're just as cross as you can be," fumed Kate, flouncing herself
into a chair.

"And anyway you're not the head of the family one bit," commenced
Stevie, warmly tossing back his curls and getting very red in the face.
"Papa said I--"

"Oh, here's a gondola stopped at our door," broke in Eva, who, taking
advantage of Miss Higginson's attention being occupied elsewhere, was
looking out of the window. "There's a boy in it lying down--a big boy.
Oh, a man's just got out and--yes, they're bringing the boy in here!

"Sakes alive!" cried Mehitabel, dropping Stevie's book on the floor and
starting for the door. "Can it possibly be Mr. Joseph and Dave?"

"Uncle Joe and Dave!" "Hurrah!" exclaimed Kate and Stevie in the same
breath; and Eva having scrambled down from the window, the three
children collected at the head of the stairs to watch, with breathless
interest, the procession which came slowly up.

The tall man on the right was their Uncle Joe Lawrence--Kate and Eva
and Stevie remembered him at once, for he had visited their parents
several times since they had been in Europe; and the bright-eyed,
pale-faced boy who lay huddled up in the chair which he and Guiseppi
carried between them must be their Cousin Dave, of whom they had heard
so much. Poor Dave! he had fallen from a tree last summer, and struck
his back, and the concussion had caused paralysis of the lower part of
the spine, so that he could not walk a step, and might not for years,
though the doctors gave hope that he would eventually recover the use
of his legs. The children gazed at him with the deepest interest and
sympathy, and they were perfectly astonished when, as the chair passed
the