re I can part pay my board, perhaps, by working
around. I can do lots of things."

"I see. Look after furnaces, and clean up yards, and all that?"

"Yes," said the boy, with heightened interest. "This other one--your
sister--says you have plenty of empty rooms in this big house. Would you
take a boarder?"

"Goodness me! I never thought of such a thing."

"You took in that Mrs. Treble and Double Trouble," whispered Agnes, who
rather favored the suit of the white-haired boy.

"They weren't boarders," Ruth breathed.

"No. But you could let him come just as well." To tell the truth, Agnes
had always thought that "a boy around the house would be awfully
handy"--and had often so expressed herself. Dot had agreed with her,
while Ruth and Tess held boys in general in much disfavor.

Neale O'Neil had stood aside, not listening, but well aware that the
sisters were discussing his suggestion. Finally he flung in: "I ain't
afraid to work. And I'm stronger than I look."

"You _must_ be strong, Neale," agreed Ruth, warmly, "if you did what
Aggie says you did. But we have Uncle Rufus, and he does most
everything, though he's old. I don't just know what to say to you."

At that moment the sound of a sash flung up at the other side of the ell
startled the three young folk. Mrs. MacCall's voice sounded sharply on
the morning air:

"That pig! in that garden again! Shoo! Shoo, you beast! I wish you'd eat
yourself to death and then maybe your master would keep you home!"

"Oh, oh, oh!" squealed Agnes. "Con Murphy's pig after our cabbages!"

"That pig again?" echoed Ruth, starting after the flying Agnes.

The latter forgot how lightly she was shod, and before she was half-way
across the lawn her feet and ankles were saturated with dew.

"You'll get sopping wet, Aggie!" cried Ruth, seeing the bed slippers
flopping, half off her sister's feet.

"Can't help it now," stammered Agnes. "Got to get that pig! Oh, Ruth!
the hateful thing!"

The cobbler's porker was a freebooter of wide experience. The old Corner
House yard was not the only forbidden premises he roved in. He always
dug a new hole under the fence at night, and appeared early in the
morning, roving at will among the late vegetables in Ruth's garden.

He gave a challenging grunt when he heard the girls, raised his head,
and his eyes seemed fairly to twinkle as he saw their wild attack. A
cabbage leaf hung crosswise in his jaws and he continued to champ upon
it reflect