you know?"

"'Cause it's Spring," answered Hal. "Everybody knows that."

"Oh, no, not everybody," replied his mother. "Your dog Roly-Poly doesn't
know it."

"Oh, yes, Mother! I think he does!" cried Mab. "He was rolling over and
over in the grass to-day, even if it was all wet like a sponge. He never
did that in the Winter."

"Well, perhaps dogs and cats do know when it is Spring. The birds do, I'm
sure, for then they come up from the South, where they have spent the
Winter, and begin to build their nests. So you think it is warm to-day
because it is Spring; do you, Hal?"

"Yes, Mother," he replied. "It's time Winter was gone, anyhow. And the
trees know it is going to be Summer soon, for they are swelling out their
buds."

"And after a while there'll be flowers," added Mab. "Didn't we have fun,
Hal, when Daddy took us hunting flowers?"

"Yes, and when he took us to the woods, and to see the different kinds of
birds," added the little boy. "We had lots of fun then."

"I wish we could have some of that kind of fun now," went on Mab. "When's
Daddy coming home, Mother?"

"Oh, not for quite a while. He has to work and earn money you know. He has
to earn more than ever, now that everything costs so much on account of
the war. Daddies don't have a very easy time these days."

"Do Mothers?" asked Mab, thinking of how she played mother to her dolls.
Maybe, she thought, she could make up a new game, pretending how hard it
was for dolls' mothers these days.

"Well, mothers have to do many things they did not have to do when things
to eat and wear did not cost so much," spoke Mother Blake. "We have to
make one loaf of bread go almost as far as two loaves used to go, and as
for clothes--well, I am mending some of yours, Hal, that, last year, I
thought were hardly useful any more. But we must save all we can. So
that's why Daddy has to work harder and longer, and why he can't come home
Saturday afternoons as early as he used to."

It was a Saturday afternoon when Hal and Mab found so much fault about not
having any fun. Almost any other day they would have been in school, and
have been busy over their lessons. But just now they wanted to play and
they were not having a very jolly time, for they could not think of
anything to do. Or, at least, they thought they could not.

"What makes it Spring?" asked Hal, after a bit, as he watched his mother
putting a patch on his little trousers. Hal remembered how he tore a hole
i