rain had come up. To insure quiet,
each girl took off her shoes, and played in stocking-feet on the bare,
rough floor, "blind-man's-buff," "hunt the slipper," and other games,
for an hour more.

Suddenly, Nimpo held up her foot.

"Girls! look there!" Nimpo's tone was tragic.

The soles of her stockings were in awful holes! All eyes were instantly
turned on her, and forty feet were simultaneously elevated to view. The
tale was the same,--every stocking sole was black as the ground, and
worn to rags!

"What will Ma say?" rose in horror to every lip.

This awful thought sobered them at once, and, finding it getting dark,
shoes were hastily sought out of the pile in the corner, sun-bonnets
donned, and slowly the long procession moved down the back stairs and
out again into the street.

Nimpo flung herself on to the little bed in her room, and sighed with
happiness.

"Oh! wasn't it splendid?--and I know mamma'll forgive my stockings.
Besides, I'll wash them myself, and darn them."

(While I am about it, I may as well say that every girl who went to
Nimpo's party had a long and serious task of darning the next week.)

When it was all over, and Mrs. Primkins and Augusta, assisted by two or
three neighbors, had washed and returned dishes, brought down tables and
chairs, swept out front hall, and reduced it to its normal condition of
dismal state, to be seen and not used, and the neighbors had gone, and
it was nine o'clock at night, Augusta sat down to reckon up debts, while
Mrs. Primkins "set the bread."

Augusta brought out her account, and read: "Mrs. A., blank loaves of
bread, ditto cake, one dish preserves; Mrs. B., ditto, ditto; Mrs. C.,
ditto, ditto."

Mrs. Primkins listened to the whole list, and made a mental calculation
of how much of the ten-dollar bill it would take to pay up. The result
must have been satisfactory, for her grim face relaxed almost into a
smile, as she covered up the "sponge" and washed her hands.

"Wal, don't let your Pa get away in the morning till he has split up a
good pile of oven-wood. We'll heat the brick oven, and have over Mis'
Kent's Mary Ann to help. I guess the money'll cover it, and I can pay
Mary Ann in old clothes."

THE LINNET'S FEE.

BY MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON.

Once I saw a wee brown linnet
Dancing on a tree,
Dancing on a tree.
How her feet flew every minute
As she danced at me-e-e;
How her feet flew every minute