of those in a day? I guess not.
Let me carry it for you, Faith. You have to hold up your dress skirt."

"Oh, thank you, Ernest, I don't mind, and he's _so_ cunning!"

Ernest kept on with the girls, now, on their side of the brook. It would be
an anti-climax to catch any more turtles this afternoon.

"If I could find one," said Gladys, "I would carry it home for my
aquarium."

"Oh, have you an aquarium?" asked Faith with interest.

"Yes, a fine one. It has gold and silver fish and a number of little water
creatures, and a grotto with plants growing around it."

"How lovely it must be," said Faith, and Gladys saw her press her lips to
the baby prince's polished back.

"She's an awfully selfish girl," thought Gladys. "I wouldn't treat company
so for anything!"

"You'll see the aquarium Faith and I have," said Ernest. "It's only a tub,
but we get a good deal of fun out of it. It's our stable, too, you see. Did
you notice we caught one of our old horses to-day? Let's see him, Faith,"
and Ernest poked among the turtles and brought out one with a little hole
made carefully in the edge of his shell.

"It seems very cruel to me," said Gladys, with a superior air.

"Oh, it isn't," returned Faith eagerly. "We'd rather hurt each other than
the turtles, wouldn't we, Ernest?"

"I guess so," responded the boy, rather gruffly. He didn't wish Gladys to
think him too good.

"It doesn't hurt them a bit," went on Faith, "but you know turtles are
lazy. They're all relations of the tortoise that raced with the hare in
AEsop's fable." Her eyes sparkled at Gladys, who smiled slightly. "And they
aren't very fond of being horses, so we only keep them a day or two and
then let them go back into the brook. I think that's about as much fun as
anything, don't you, Ernest?"

"Oh, I don't know," responded her brother, who was beginning to feel that
all this turtle business was a rather youthful pastime for a member of a
baseball team.

"You see," went on Faith, "we put the turtles on the grass only a foot or
two away from the brook, and wait."

"And we do have to wait," added Ernest, "for they always retire within
themselves and pull down the blind, as soon as we start off with them
anywhere."

"But we press a little on their backs," said Faith, "and then they put out
their noses, and when they smell the brook they begin to travel. It's such
fun to see them dive in, _ker-chug_! Then they scurry around and burrow in
the mud, getting