for than
her sister Tiney's.

The third little girl, _Jessie,_ was very fair, with beautiful deep blue
eyes, and golden curling hair; but the curls were all in tangles, for no
one took the trouble to keep them in order, except on great occasions,
when the poor child was put to the torture of having it brushed and
combed, and laid in ringlets, which for the time were the special pride
of her mother.

"You'll have enough to do, Miss Agnes, to tame all these rough
spirits," said Mr. Fairland, "they have been running wild ever since we
left the city, and a more rude and ungoverned set of little desperadoes,
it has never been your lot to meet with, I'll venture to say." And then
addressing them, he said, "come here, children, what do you stand there
gaping for, with your thumbs in your mouths, as if you had never seen
anybody before? Tiney! Rosa, you witch! Jess, my chicken! come up here
this minute, and speak to Miss Elwyn."

But Tiney only pouted her ugly mouth and scowled; and Rosa, making a
sudden dart for her mother's chair, retreated behind it, peering out her
black eyes occasionally, to take a look at the stranger; while Jessie
ran and sprang into her father's lap, hiding her little tangled head on
his shoulder. And now a whooping and shouting made known the approach of
Master Frank, the son and heir, a young individual of about four years
of age, who, nothing daunted by the stranger's appearance, made for his
father's chair, and proceeded to dislodge his sister Jessie from her
seat, and to establish himself in her place. Jessie screamed, and
scratched, and pulled in vain. Frank, though younger, was much the
strongest, and the fight ended by the sudden descent of Miss Jessie to
the floor, and the ascension of Master Frank into the vacated place.

"Be quiet now, will you, Frank, and speak to Miss Elwyn," said his
father.

"Hallo! is that Miss Elwyn?" exclaimed Master Frank, aloud; "why,
C'lista said she was old and ugly."

"Well, C'listy didn't know, did she?" said his father.

"And Ev'lina said she'd train us well, and whip us, and shut us up, and
be awful cross all the time. She doesn't look like that, does she,
papa?"

"No, she does not," said his father; "and I guess Evelina must have been
mistaken too."

Agnes was all this time looking at Frank, very much amused, and laughing
quietly at the description which had been given of her to the children.

"You think I do not look so very terrible, then, Mast