he gardener meant that he would scratch us with his ten
fingers--but he wouldn't have, for he was too kind-hearted in spite of
his threats. He was a queer man, with a brown, wrinkled old face. I
can see him just as though it were yesterday."

"What was that you said?" asked Betty. "'Shog off!' What does it
mean?"

"Simply Warwickshire for 'Go away,'" was Mrs. Pitt's careless answer.
Her thoughts had gone back to her childhood.

"You forgot to tell us what the 'Wishing Tree' was for," Betty timidly
suggested, fearful of interrupting her reminiscences.

"Why, so I did! We would tiptoe all alone up to the tree, and if,
under its wide branches, we made a wish, we thought it was sure to
come true. There was another curious old game of finding out how many
years we were to live, by a ball. We would bounce it upon the hard
ground, and catching it again and again in our hands, would chant all
the while:

'Ball-ee, ball-ee, tell me true,
How many years I've got to go through,
One, two, three, four,--'

If that had proved true, I shouldn't be here to-day to tell of it,
for I was never very skillful with the ball, and could only catch it
ten or fifteen times at the most."

Mrs. Pitt laughed. "There is so much of ancient folk-lore here in
Warwickshire," she went on. "I remember that the old country people
always crossed themselves or said some charm for a protection, when
one lone magpie flew over their heads. That meant bad luck, for the
verses said:

'For one magpie means sorrow,
Two, mirth,
Three, a wedding,
And four, a birth.'

Why, what is it, Barbara?"

Barbara had jumped to her feet, and was wildly waving her arms about
her head. "It's only a bee," she said, rather ashamed. "I don't like
them quite so near."

It was delightful to ride along on this "rare day in June," through
the fair county of Warwickshire,--the "Heart of England." If they were
just a bit uncomfortably warm on the hill-top where the sun beat down
upon the fields and open road, they were soon again in the beautiful
woodland, where the cool air refreshed them, or passing through the
street of some remote village, shaded by giant elms. In each little
hamlet, as well as the row of peaceful thatched cottages, with smoke
curling upwards from their chimneys, there was the ancient
vine-covered church, with perhaps a Norman tower, where the rooks
found a home, and the gray old rectory close at hand.

When Be