dle, and yet she was always at leisure, and so she
managed to obtain the confidences of all the children; she thoroughly
understood each individual character, and she led her small brood with
silken reins.

Dr. Maybright was a great deal older than his wife. He was a tall man,
still very erect in his figure, with square shoulders, and a keen,
bright, kindly face. He had a large practice, extending over many miles,
and although he had not the experience which life in a city would have
given him, he was a very clever physician, and many of his brothers in
the profession prophesied eminence for him whenever he chose to come
forward and take it. Dr. Maybright was often absent from home all day
long, sometimes also in the dead of night the children heard his
carriage wheels as they bowled away on some errand of mercy. Polly
always thought of her father as a sort of angel of healing, who came
here, there, and everywhere, and took illness and death away with him.

"Father won't let Josie Wilson die," Polly used to say; or, "What bad
toothache Peter Simpkins has to-day--but when father sees him he will
be all right."

Polly had a great reverence for her father, although she loved her
beautiful young mother best. The children never expected Dr. Maybright
to join in their games, or to be sympathetic over their joys or their
woes. They reverenced him much, they loved him well, but he was too busy
and too great to be troubled by their little concerns. Of course, mother
was different, for mother was part and parcel of their lives.

There were six tall, slim, rather straggling-looking Maybright
girls--all overgrown, and long of limb, and short of frock. Then there
came two podgy boys, greater pickles than the girls, more hopelessly
disreputable, more defiant of all authority, except mother's. Polly was
as bad as her brothers in this respect, but the other five girls were
docility itself compared to these black lambs, whose proper names were
Charley and John, but who never had been called anything, and never
would be called anything in that select circle, but Bunny and Bob.

This was the family; the more refined neighbors rather dreaded them, and
even the villagers spoke of most of them as "wondrous rampageous!" But
Mrs. Maybright always smiled when unfriendly comments reached her ears.

"Wait and see," she would say; "just quietly wait and see--they are
all, every one of them, the sweetest and most healthy-minded children in
th