e," said with a piteous under-lip, was
generally a most convincing answer.

Then the small people could not be disabused of the idea that certain
chief treasures of their own would be safer under papa's writing-table
or mamma's sofa than in the safest closet of their own domains. My
writing-table was dockyard for Arthur's new ship, and stable for little
Tom's pepper-and-salt-colored pony, and carriage-house for Charley's new
wagon, while whole armies of paper dolls kept house in the recess behind
mamma's sofa.

And then, in due time, came the tribe of pets who followed the little
ones and rejoiced in the blaze of the firelight. The boys had a splendid
Newfoundland, which, knowing our weakness, we warned them with awful
gravity was never to be a parlor-dog; but, somehow, what with little
beggings and pleadings on the part of Arthur and Tom, and the piteous
melancholy with which Rover would look through the window-panes, when
shut out from the blazing warmth into the dark, cold veranda, it at last
came to pass that Rover gained a regular corner at the hearth, a regular
_status_ in every family-convocation. And then came a little
black-and-tan English terrier for the girls; and then a fleecy poodle,
who established himself on the corner of my wife's sofa; and for each of
these some little voices pleaded, and some little heart would be so near
broken at any slight, that my wife and I resigned ourselves to live in
menagerie, the more so as we were obliged to confess a lurking weakness
towards these four-footed children ourselves.

So we grew and flourished together,--children, dogs, birds, flowers, and
all; and although my wife often, in paroxysms of housewifeliness to
which the best of women are subject, would declare that we never were
fit to be seen, yet I comforted her with the reflection that there were
few people whose friends seemed to consider them better worth seeing,
judging by the stream of visitors and loungers which was always setting
towards our parlor. People seemed to find it good to be there; they said
it was somehow home-like and pleasant, and that there was a kind of
charm about it that made it easy to talk and easy to live; and as my
girls and boys grew up, there seemed always to be some merry doing or
other going on there. Arty and Tom brought home their college friends,
who straightway took root there and seemed to fancy themselves a part of
us. We had no reception-rooms apart, where the girls were to