the sisters had walked
farther down the High Road than they imagined before a likely buyer came
in sight.

[Illustration: "I held a long stick for him to hook on."]

'There's a gentleman,' said May, in a very shaky voice. 'You ask him,
Ada--you.'

'Please, sir, will you--would you buy a pincushion?' stammered Ada. The
pincushion factory was all very well, but the selling part did not seem
so pleasant, now that she had come to the point.

'And what should I want with a pincushion?' said some one far above
their heads, so gruffly that Ada longed to run away, and May, somehow,
found that tears were very near.

'And what may you be doing here alone with your pincushions?' went on
this terrible voice; but it was not so gruff this time. There was
something in it which they thought they had heard before. Looking up,
who should it be but their father's Irish friend, Mr. O'Brien, whom they
were trying to capture for their first customer!

'Oh!' cried Ada, 'it's you!' and the whole story came tumbling out in
such a confused way that Mr. O'Brien had nearly taken them back to Grove
Villa before he quite understood it.

Mother, too, was very much puzzled. 'No, I don't say it was naughty, my
dears, but you had better not have surprises out of doors again,' she
said. 'But what made you think of it at all, Ada?'

'But Grannie and Grandfather could live here if they wanted to, only the
country is better for them,' she explained, when the little girls had
told her the reason of their 'factory.' 'Yes, you do hear me say we
can't afford things, but they are things we don't really need. You
always have all you want, don't you? Don't worry your little heads about
money, then, and promise me one thing--never to go a step farther than I
send you when you go out alone! You might have been lost if Mr. O'Brien
hadn't met you!'

'Indeed we will not, Mother darling!' cried the two in one breath.

'And I think,' said May, soberly, 'we will tell Jane or somebody about
our next surprise, and then we shall know whether it is all right.'

E. S. S.

THE SLOTH.

Waterton, the famous naturalist, has told us concerning his doings with
a sloth when he was going through a forest near the River Essequibo. He
says: 'I saw a large sloth on the ground upon the bank. How he had got
there nobody could tell. My Indian said he had never surprised a sloth
in such a situation before. He could hardly have come there to drink,
for both above and