prompt in reply.

"The end of this month, too, I'll have you both sent to school,"
continued the farmer with a look of hearty good-will, that Tim thought
would have harmonised better with a promise to give them jam-tart and
cream. "It's vacation time just now, and the schoolmaster's away for a
holiday. When he comes back you'll have to cultivate mind as well as
soil, my boys, for I've come under an obligation to look after your
education, and even if I hadn't, I'd do it to satisfy my own
conscience."

The _couleur-de-rose_ with which Bob and Tim had begun to invest their
future faded perceptibly on hearing this. The viands, however, were so
good that it did not disturb them very much. They ate away heartily,
and in silence. Little Martha was not less diligent, for she had been
busy all the morning in the dairy and kitchen, playing, rather than
working, at domestic concerns, yet in her play doing much real work, and
acquiring useful knowledge, as well as an appetite.

After dinner the farmer rose at once. He was one of those who find it
unnecessary either to drink or smoke after meals. Indeed, strong drink
and tobacco were unknown in his house, and, curiously enough, nobody
seemed to be a whit the worse for their absence. There were some
people, indeed, who even went the length of asserting that they were all
the better for their absence!

"Now for the hard work I promised you, boys; come along."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

OCCUPATIONS AT BRANKLY FARM.

The farmer led our two boys through a deliciously scented pine-wood at
the rear of his house, to a valley which seemed to extend and widen out
into a multitude of lesser valleys and clumps of woodland, where
lakelets and rivulets and waterfalls glittered in the afternoon sun like
shields and bands of burnished silver.

Taking a ball of twine from one of his capacious pockets, he gave it to
Bobby along with a small pocket-book.

"Have you got clasp-knives?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said both boys, at once producing instruments which were
very much the worse for wear.

"Very well, now, here is the work I want you to do for me this
afternoon. D'you see the creek down in the hollow yonder--about half a
mile off?"

"Yes, yes, sir."

"Well, go down there and cut two sticks about ten feet long each; tie
strings to the small ends of them; fix hooks that you'll find in that
pocket-book to the lines. The creek below the fall is swarming with
fish; you'll find g