ave you at last learned to multiply
fractions?"

She looked up, smiling into his laughing eyes.

"Mr. Lindsay, I am not so stupid as when you tried so hard to explain
that sum to me. I keep the account, and your uncle examines it once a
week. He says it will teach me to be accurate in my figures."

"What did you pay for your rabbits? I have a pair of Angolas for you,
but the man from whom I bought them advised me not to remove them
until all danger of cold weather had passed, as they are quite
young."

"Thank you, Mr. Lindsay. You are very kind to remember that I wished
for them last year. I did not buy these----"

She raised the rabbit from her apron, and rubbed her cheek against
its soft fur, then added in a lower and touching tone:

"My mother sent them to me. I can't tell how she found out that of
all things I wished most to have them, but you know, sir, that
mothers seem inspired, they always understand what is in their
children's hearts and minds, and need no telling. So I love these
more than all my pets; they are the latest message from my mother."

She held out her hand, and interpreting the expression in her superb
eyes, he placed the other rabbit in her arms, and for a moment she
pressed them close.

"I must shut them up until to-morrow, or the owls might make a supper
of them, as happened to some the Sisters kept at the convent."

She opened the door of a wired apartment beneath the pigeon-house,
where in an adjoining division the pheasants were settling upon their
perch, and carefully deposited the bouncing furry creatures on a bed
of wheat straw.

"Mr. Lindsay, the fowls are all going to roost, and you must wait
till morning to see the squabs, and broods of Brahmas and Leghorns.
They look like snowballs rolling about after their food."

As she locked up the grain, and balanced the key on her fingers, her
companion said:

"I must persuade Uncle Peyton to get some black Spanish, and a few
Poland chickens."

"Oh no! We don't want any black things; if they laid a dozen eggs a
day they could not come here. We never raise a fowl that has coloured
feathers; all our beauties must be like snow."

"I see you have converted my uncle to your pet doctrine, and before
long I suppose you will persuade him to sell his pretty bay, and buy
a white pony?"

"No, sir, I like 'Sultan' too well to care much about his colour, and
beside, Mr. Hargrove is attached to him. There is one thing we both
want very mu