in pie--sky high."

_Fandy:_ "Don't be so unproper. It's pumpkun pie. Dorothy said so. And,
besides, we ought to let the comp'ny do the talking."

"Humph! By this time, we've made them forget what they were talkin'
about."

"Not I, Charity," laughed Donald, turning to the latest speaker. "In the
first place, Josie and Ed didn't feel like leaving home on Thanksgiving
Day till after dinner, and we two fellows are going to teach Josie and
Dorry to shoot straight. And" (now addressing Ben, who by this time was
wedging the handle of a hammer) "as for the gun, Ben, you're always
welcome to it, so long as you return it in as good order as you did last
time. You cleaned it better than I do."

"I found the rags," said Helen, slyly,--"ever so many. Didn't I, Ben?"

Ben nodded at her, and Helen, made happy for the whole day, ran off
hugging a broken dolly in exact imitation of Charity and Baby Jamie;
meanwhile her big brother, pleased at Don's compliments, remarked, "It's
a prime gun, and never fails."

"Never fails _you_, Ben, you may as well say. It often fails me, never
mind how carefully I aim."

"That's just it, Donald," said Ben. "There's no good in aiming so
particular."

"Well, what's a fellow to do?" replied Donald. "You must take aim, and
by the time you get a bird well sighted, he's gone."

"Sight? I never sight," said Ben. "I just fire ahead."

"You don't mean to say you shoot a bird without aiming at him?"

"Oh, well, I aim, of course; but I don't look through the sight, or any
such nonsense."

"I don't understand," said Donald, doubtingly.

"Don't you? Why, it's just this: if the bird's flying he'll go ahead,
won't he? Well, you fire ahead and meet him,--that's the whole of it.
You know how an Indian shoots an arrow. He doesn't look along the line
of the arrow for ten minutes, like a city archer; he decides, in a
flash, what he's going to do, and lets fly. Practice is the thing. Now,
when you're after a wild duck, you can aim exactly at him and he's safe
as a turnip; but see a strip of water ahead betwixt the muzzle of your
gun and him, and he's a gone bird, if you fire straight. You have to
allow for diving--but practice is the thing. Learn by missing."

"Oh, that's good!" shouted Daniel David; "'learn by missing.' I'm going
to try that plan in school after this. Don't you say so, Fandy?"

"No, I don't," said the inflexible Fandy, while he gazed in great
admiration at the two big boys.

At this p