n a basket just as you
said. The old hen is on the other eggs."

"Maybe six will be all," said Mrs. Cole. "That thunder-storm day before
yesterday was pretty rough on eggs 'most ready to hatch."

Six chickens, instead of eighteen! An air-castle fell with such a crash
that it almost seemed to Peggy as if the little group about her must be
aware of its downfall. Then she took a long breath. "Well, even six, at
forty cents a pound, won't be so bad for a start," said Peggy to
herself.

Mrs. Cole looked admiringly after the young people as they took their
departure, Dorothy and Annie racing on ahead. "They're what I call a
handsome pair," she exclaimed.

Rosetta Muriel objected. "He's awful swell, but she ain't a bit. Look at
her gingham dress."

"Seems to me that her gingham dress is just the thing for running around
in the woods and fields," said Mrs. Cole, who did not often pluck up
courage sufficiently to oppose her own opinions to her daughter's
superior wisdom. "I've seen her fixed up in white of an evening, and
looking like a picture. But, as far as that goes," she concluded
resolutely, "there's so much to her face, just as if her head was
crammed full of bright ideas, and her heart of kind thoughts, that you
get to looking at her, and forget what she's wearing. An' I guess that
young man thinks so, too."

The closing sentence silenced the retort on Rosetta Muriel's lips. Her
mother had voiced her own suspicions. As a rule, the sophisticated
Rosetta Muriel had very little respect for her mother's opinions, but,
in this case, her views happened to coincide with some inward doubts of
her own. Rosetta Muriel wondered if it were possible, after all, that
sweetness and intelligence written in a girl's face, might count for
more than some other things.

Farmer Cole's optimism regarding Hobo was justified. For that very
evening as the young folks ranged themselves in a semi-circle for the
flash-light picture, on which Amy had set her heart, Hobo appeared,
looking very interesting in his big collar of bandages, and squeezed
himself into the very front of the circle, with a dog's deep-rooted
aversion to being left out of anything. Poor Hobo! He was inexperienced
in the matter of flash-lights, and that eventful day was to end in still
another shock. For when the powder was touched off and the room was
illumined by the lurid glare, high above the inevitable chorus of
screams and laughter, sounded Hobo's yelp of terrifie