ool here," said Theodora, "and we can
learn a good deal, if we study well. But I should like to go to a more
advanced school when I get a little older, so that I could be a teacher
myself, perhaps; though I would rather be something else than a
teacher," she added.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't quite like to tell you that just yet," she said.

"I am going to show you the good apple trees," she continued, and led
the way through the orchard. "These three great ones, here below the
garden wall, are Orange Speck trees; they are real nice apples for
winter; and there is the Gilliflower tree. Over here is the Early Sweet
Bough; and that big one is the August Sweeting; and out there are the
three August Pippins. All those away down there toward the road are
Baldwins and Greenings. Those two by the lane wall are None Such trees.
Out there by the corn-field wall are four Sweet Harvey trees and next
below them, two Georgianas. I learned all their names last year. But
this one here by the currant bushes is a Sops-in-wine. Oh, they are so
good! and they get ripe early, too, and so do the August Pippins and the
Harveys and the August Sweetings; they are all nice. Those small trees
just below the barnyard fence are pears, Bartlett pears, luscious ones!
and those vines on the trellises are the Isabella and Concord grapes;
some years grapes don't get ripe up here in Maine; but they did last
year, pretty ripe, in October. Grandfather carried some of them to the
County Fair and lots of the apples; he had over forty different kinds of
fruit on exhibition. We girls went with him and placed the apples and
pears and the grapes on plates, in the Fair building. You will go with
us this year, I suppose.

"All this ground here is planted to beets and carrots and turnips. You
mustn't step on it," my pleasant-voiced cousin admonished me. "And we
will not go up very close to that little shed there. That is the
bee-house. See all those hives! The bees will sometimes sting any one
they don't know. Ad isn't afraid of them; I am not much afraid; they
have never stung me. They sting Halstead like sport, if he goes up in
front of the hives. Grandfather puts on a veil and some gloves and takes
them off the apple tree limbs, when they swarm. Ellen is afraid of them,
too; but Wealthy will go up and sit right down in her little chair,
close by that biggest, old, dark-colored hive. There's an enormous swarm
in that hive; and they send out two o