to say. Bess was gazing sadly at her roll of
cambric which was to have done duty as suits of Lincoln green for the
foresters, and Ikey was thinking of the fur rug and the clothes-pins,
when Carl proposed a raid for the recovery of their possessions. "The
girls can wait on the fence and take the things as we bring them," he
said.

This promised a little excitement, so on the very spot from which they
had made their first entrance into Sherwood forest, Bess and Louise
waited while the boys dropped down and disappeared behind the bushes.
In a few minutes they came rushing back empty handed, to report that
not a trace of anything was to be found, and that a man with a scythe
was at work on the other side of the garden cutting down the grass.

* * * * *

It was very quiet in the neighborhood that afternoon. There were no
children to be seen anywhere, and on the broad piazza of the house
where the Hazeltines lived the chairs and settees, with here and there
a gay cushion, appeared to be having a good time all to themselves,
gathered in sociable groups. The clematis and honeysuckle swung softly
in the breeze, making graceful shadows, and the maple trees stretched
out long arms and touched each other gently now and then. At the back
of the house on the kitchen steps sat Aunt Sukey, a person of dignity
and authority. Her hands were folded over her white apron and her eyes
rested with satisfaction on the rows of peach preserves that
represented her morning's work.

"Mammy," as the children called her, was a family institution, and
could not be spared, though her last nursling was fast outgrowing her.

No preserves tasted like Sukey's, and no one could, on occasion, make
such rolls.

"Yes," she remarked, continuing her conversation with Mandy, the cook,
who was stepping around inside, "they's _mischevious_ of course, but I
can remember when Mr. Frank and Mr. William was a heap worse."

"Law, Aunt Sukey, I wouldn't want to see 'em if they was any worse
than that Ikey Ford! It looks like the children has been up to twice
as many pranks since he come," replied Mandy.

"He don't take after his pa, then; Mr. Isaac was as nice,
quiet-mannered a boy as you ever see, when he used to go with Mr.
Frank. But pshaw! all that triflin' is soon over. Look at Miss Zelie:
seems like it warn't no time since she was climbin' fences and tearin'
her clothes, till I'd get clean discouraged tryin' to keep her nic