ing for a choice little bud to fasten in
Emily's hair; and when he found it, he came whistling out into the
clear grassy spaces again, a little bird in a bough overhead tilting,
and twittering, and eying him askance.

Will rushed up to Emily, and hung the bud in her ear; he rearranged it
in the blue ribbon of her hair, so that it nodded sleepily over her
nose; he dropped it, as if it were a tiny pink egg, in the soft golden
moss of curls which he upturned on his sister's head. Then he threw it
away, and stamped on it; for Emily had drawn a book from her pocket,
and deep in some fairy under-world story, was unmindful of his roses
and his pains.

He ran recklessly away into the rose garden; he caught a bumblebee; he
pursued a daddy long-leg with the watering-pot, going deeper and
deeper all the time among the briery branches. The crashing of the
stems caused Emily to come up from fairy-land a moment.

"Have a care, Will, dear. The roses have thorns. You may tear your
nice jacket."

Crash, crash! rip, rip! The rose trees are dragging at Will with their
prickly fingers. With great effort he burst away from them, and rushed
out, with no worse mischance than a rent in his trousers.

"Aw! aw! aw!"

All the little knolls seemed to take up Will's sorrowful cry, and
repeat it.

"You must not tear or soil your clothes."

Every cricket in the grass seemed to be screaming these words of his
mother, and here was her luckless son with two green spots on his
stockings, and a grievous rent in his new pantaloons.

It was Kathleen's afternoon out; she had warned him, and there was no
help in that direction. He looked mournfully over his shoulder at the
damages with a vague idea that he had perhaps some undeveloped
capacity for mending.

[Illustration: "YOU'LL SEE HOW NICELY I'LL SEW IT."]

"Couldn't you pin it up nicely?" he inquired, in most insinuating
tones, of Emily, whose eye just then met his.

Emily burst into a merry laugh.

Will was mute with indignation, and tingling to his finger's ends,
with this untimely mirth. His flashing eyes asked if this were a time
for jesting.

"Come here, Willy, boy, and you'll see how nicely I'll sew it, not pin
it. Never fret about it, dear; I will explain to mamma that you were
really not so much in fault. It was only rather a mistake to get in so
far among the bushes. If you had been chasing the cat, or turning
somersets, she might, perhaps, be vexed; but poh! she will excuse
t