ously, if she would discover why an
officer should be less open to objection than a common soldier, for it was
true enough that many who wore the stripes had stepped up from the ranks;
yet how few of the better class care to make friends with the common
soldier, be he ever so respectable as a private individual. Was it likely
that a cloak of uncommon respectability was put on with the officer's
uniform? Hardly; else some of them lost the cloak very shortly after it was
put on.

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Sherwood, accompanied by Mr. Plaisted, made a trip to Prince Edward
Island before the winter set in, and though they did not make a very
extensive purchase, they travelled through the country and learned its
resources, visiting many farms where salable horses could be secured in the
spring. They took the horses they purchased direct to New York, where they
were disposed of to good advantage, after which Mr. Sherwood returned to
Halifax and settled down for the winter.

Mr. Plaisted remained in New York, but promised to be in Halifax early in
the spring, and be ready for the first boat that crossed to the Island.

The first winter in Halifax passed very pleasantly to the Sherwoods. The
winter sports were new, and keenly enjoyed, and the "Sherwood twins" soon
became as good skaters as those who had practised the art for years. Yet no
one must imagine that everything ran as smoothly as clockwork in the
Sherwood household, for there are few families who can boast of such
perfect regulations that there is _never_ a jar.

Mrs. Sherwood had been only too willing to throw off all responsibility and
place her duties on Aunt Jennie's shoulders, but there were many things
that must of necessity be left to Mrs. Sherwood herself, and when such
things were put off indefinitely they were apt to prove annoying;
consequently, when "patience ceased to be a virtue," the domestic
atmosphere was sometimes cleared by a small-sized storm.

There are also times when domestic helps are apt to be exasperating in the
extreme, and a word of rebuke or remonstrance is like a match to a can of
gunpowder; the powder is apt to go off, and the girl just as likely, and
both leave an unpleasantness behind them. Queer, too, that both are apt to
go off at the most unexpected and inconvenient moment; but so it is.

The Sherwood family were not exempt from this experience, for Biddy raised
a storm because Dinah seemed to be made more of than she was hersel