es her as she loves her
sisters,--wins upon Phil, whose liking for her is becoming demonstrative
to a degree that prompts a little jealousy in the warm-blooded Reuben,
and that drives out all thought of the pink cheeks and fat arms of Suke
Boody. Miss Johns still regards her with admiring eyes, and shows all
her old assiduity in looking after her comforts and silken trappings.
Day after day, in summer weather, Rose and she idle together along the
embowered paths of the village; the Tew partners greet the pair with
smiles; good Mistress Elderkin has always a cordial welcome; the stout
Squire stoops to kiss the little Jesuit, who blushes at the tender
affront through all the brownness of her cheek, like a rose. Day after
day the rumble of the mill breaks on the country quietude; and as autumn
comes in, burning with all its forest fires, the farmer's flails beat
time together, as they did ten years before.

At the academy, Phil and Reuben plot mischief, and they cement their
friendship with not a few boyish quarrels.

Thus, Reuben, in the way of the boyish pomologists of those days, has
buried at midsummer in the orchard a dozen or more of the finest
windfalls from the early apple-trees, that they may mellow, away from
the air, into good eating condition, and he has marked the spot in his
boyish way with a little pyramid of stones. Strolling down the orchard a
few days later, he sees Phil coming away from that locality, with his
pockets bulging out ominously, and munching a great apple with
extraordinary relish. Perhaps there is a thought that he may design a
gift out of the stolen stores for Adele; at any rate, Reuben flies at
him.

"I say, Phil, that's doosed mean now, to be stealing my apples!"

"Who's stole your apples?" says Phil, with a great roar of voice.

"You have," says Reuben; and having now come near enough to find his
pyramid of stones all laid low, he says more angrily,--"You're a thief!
and you've got 'em in your pocket!"

"Thief!" says Phil, looking threateningly, and throwing away his apple
half-eaten, "if you call me a thief, I say you're a----you know what."

"Well, blast you," says Reuben, boiling with rage, "say it! Call me a
liar, if you dare!"

"I do dare," says Phil, "if you accuse me of stealing your apples; and I
say you're a liar, and be darned to you!"

At this, Reuben, though he is the shorter by two or three inches, and no
match for his foe at fisticuffs, plants a blow straight in P