oint, the mother appeared at the door with an empty pail in
each hand, and before she had time to call, David and Fandy rushed
toward her, seized the pails, and would have been off together for the
well, if Mrs. Danby had not said, "Let David get the water, Fandy, and
you bring me some light wood for boiling the kettle."

"You can't boil the kettle, Ma," called out one of the children. "You
boil the water."

"No more you can't," assented Mrs. Danby, with an admiring laugh.

All this time, Dorry had been tossing the struggling baby, and finally
winning it to smiles, though every fibre in its plump little body was
squirming in the direction of Charity Cora. Meanwhile, that
much-enduring sister had made several pungent remarks, in a low tone, to
her visitor, concerning babies in general and Jamie in particular.

"Now you see how nice it is! He keeps up that wriggling all day. Now
it's to come to me; but when I have him, it's wriggling for the
chickens, and for Mother, and for everything. And if you set him down
out-of-doors he sneezes; and if you set him down in the house he
screams; and Ma calls out to know 'if I can't amuse that baby!' I tote
him round from morning to night--so I do!"

Here the baby's struggles became so violent and noisy that Charity Cora
savagely took him from Dorry; whereat he threw his plump little arms
about his sister's neck with such a satisfied baby-sigh that she kissed
him over and over, and looked in placid triumph at Dorothy, apparently
forgetting that she ever had made the slightest complaint against him.

"Have you begun with your new teacher yet?" she asked, hugging Jamie,
and looking radiantly at Dorothy.

"Oh, no!" answered Dorry. "How did you know Dr. Lane was going?"

"Ma heard it somewhere! My, don't I wish I had a teacher to come every
day and put me through! I'm just dying to learn things. But something
always interferes with my getting to school. There's so much to do in
the house; and now that we're to have a boarder there'll be more to do
than ever. It's nice to be useful, I s'pose, but I'm really as ignorant,
Dorothy Reed, as a--as a baby" (this simile was suggested by little
Jamie's busy efforts to pull off her linen collar); "why, do you know, I
can't even--"

And here the girls sauntered off together to sit down on a tree-stump,
and have a good long talk, if the baby would allow it.

CHAPTER VIII.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.

JUST as Donald and Dorothy wer