nthills for mountains
and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedy
seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a
remarkable reason--none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the
ear with his wing--and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on
the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of
his paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose.
The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur sticking
up straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and the
mice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads. So all
ended happily."

"He does beat all!" thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of the
nonsense from the doorway. "Wouldn't it make Pete Leddy mad if he could
hear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!"

Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking. She was
slightly jealous of the neighbors' pastry as entering into her own
particular field of excellence. Jack saw that the supply of cake in
the Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on the
Eternal Painter's palette.

"The doctor said that I was to have a light diet," he expostulated; "and
I am stuffed to the brim."

"I'll make you some floating island," said Mrs. Galway, refusing to
strike her colors.

"That isn't filling and passes the time," Jack admitted.

"Jim says if you had to Fletcherize on floating island you would starve
to death and your teeth would get so used to missing a step on the stairs
that they would never be able to deal with real victuals at all."

"Mrs. Galway," Jack observed sagely, dropping his head on the back of the
chair, "I see that it has occurred to you and Jim that it is an excellent
world and full of excellent nonsense. I am ready to eat both fluffy isles
and the yellow sea in which they float. I am ready to keep on getting
hungry with my efforts, even though you make it continents and oceans!"

From his window he had a view, over the dark, polished green of Jim's
orange trees, of the range, brown and gray and bare, holding steady
shadows of its own and host to the shadows of journeying clouds, with the
pass set in the centre as a cleft in a forbidding barrier. In the yard
Wrath of God, Jag Ear, and P.D. were tethered. Deep content illumined the
faces of P.D. and Jag Ear; but Wrath of God was as sorrowful as ever. A
cheerful Wrath of Go