to tell. I staid awhile at the
institution, but I didn't get much good there, only I learned to read
to myself, because if I read out loud they came and took the book away.
Then I left there and went to live out, but the woman was awful mean.
She throwed away one of my books and I was only half through it. It was
a real good book, named 'The Bridal Corpse, or Montregor's Curse,' and
I had to pay for it at the circulatin' library. So I left her quick
enough, and then I went on the stage."

"On the stage!" cried Euphemia. "What did you do on the stage?"

"Scrub," replied Pomona. "You see that I thought if I could get anything
to do at the theayter, I could work my way up, so I was glad to get
scrubbin'. I asked the prompter, one morning, if he thought there was a
chance for me to work up, and he said yes, I might scrub the galleries,
and then I told him that I didn't want none of his lip, and I pretty
soon left that place. I heard you was akeepin' house out here, and so I
thought I'd come along and see you, and if you hadn't no girl I'd like
to live with you again, and I guess you might as well take me, for that
other girl said, when she got down from the shed, that she was goin'
away to-morrow; she wouldn't stay in no house where they kept such a
dog, though I told her I guessed he was only cuttin' 'round because he
was so glad to get loose."

"Cutting around!" exclaimed Euphemia. "It was nothing of the kind. If
you had seen him you would have known better. But did you come now to
stay? Where are your things?"

"On me," replied Pomona.

When Euphemia found that the Irish girl really intended to leave, we
consulted together and concluded to engage Pomona, and I went so far as
to agree to carry her books to and from the circulating library to which
she subscribed, hoping thereby to be able to exercise some influence
on her taste. And thus part of the old family of Rudder Grange had come
together again. True, the boarder was away, but, as Pomona remarked,
when she heard about him, "You couldn't always expect to ever regain the
ties that had always bound everybody."

Our delight and interest in our little farm increased day by day. In
a week or two after Pomona's arrival I bought a cow. Euphemia was
very anxious to have an Alderney,--they were such gentle, beautiful
creatures,--but I could not afford such a luxury. I might possibly
compass an Alderney calf, but we would have to wait a couple of years
for our milk, an