dge bade the children look out of the window at a bird's nest,
which was snuggled into one corner of the piazza-roof, so high up that
nobody could reach it without a very tall ladder.

"Now," said aunt Madge, "the very first thing Grace hears in the morning
will probably be bird-music."

Grace clapped her hands.

"And where am _I_ going to sleep?" said Horace, who had been listening,
and looking on in silence. His aunt had forgotten that he was sometimes
jealous; but she could not help knowing it now, for a very disagreeable
expression looked out at his eyes, and drew down the corners of his
mouth.

"Why, Horace dear, we have to put you in one of the back chambers, just
as we did when you were here before; but you know it's a nice clean
room, with white curtains, and you can look out of the window at the
garden."

"But it's over the kitchen!"

"There, Horace," said Grace, "I'd be ashamed! You don't act like a
little gentleman! What would pa say?"

"Why couldn't I have the big front chamber?" said the little boy,
shuffling his feet, and looking down at his shoes.

"Because," said aunt Madge, smiling, "that is for your mother and the
baby."

"But if I could have this little cunning room, I'd go a flyin'. Grace
ain't company any more than me."

Aunt Madge remembered Horace's hit-or-miss way of using things, and
thought of the elephant that once walked into a china shop.

Grace laughed aloud.

"Why, Horace Clifford, you'd make the room look like everything; you
know you would! O, auntie, you ought to see how he musses up my cabinet!
I have to hide the key; I do _so_!"

Horace took the room which was given him, but he left his sister without
his usual good-night kiss, and when he repeated his prayer, I am afraid
he was thinking all the while about the green chamber.

The next morning the children had intended to go into the garden bright
and early. Grace loved flowers, and when she was a mere baby, just able
to toddle into the meadow, she would clip off the heads of buttercups
and primroses, hugging and kissing them like friends.

Horace, too, had some fancy for flowers, especially flaring ones, like
sunflowers and hollyhocks. Dandelions were nice when the stems would
curl without bothering, and poppies were worth while for little girls,
he thought, because, after they are gone to seed, you can make them into
pretty good teapots.

He wanted to go out in the garden now for humming-birds, and to see if
th