ey if a man can
never keep it in his pocket? When I lived up at Mr. Daniel Mortimer's,
the children never had my key--never."

"Well, come with us, then, and give us out the pears yourself. We won't
take one."

Nicholas, with a twin on each side, and the other children bringing up
the rear, was now walked off to the fruit-house, grumbling as he went.

"I left Mr. Mortimer's, I did, because I couldn't stand the children;
and now the world's a deal fuller of 'em than it was then. No, Miss
Gladys, I'm not a-going any faster; I wouldn't run, if it was ever so.
When the contrac' was signed of my wages, it was never wrote down that I
had to run at any time."

And having now reached the fruit-house, he was just pulling out his big
key, when something almost like shame showed itself in his ruddy face,
as a decided and somewhat mocking voice addressed him.

"Well, Nicholas, I'm just amazed at ye! I've lived upward of sixty years
in this island, Scotland and England both, and never did I see a man got
over so by children in my life! Talking of my niece's children, are
ye--Mrs. Daniel Mortimer's? I wonder at ye--they were just nothing to
these."

Here Mr. Swan, having unlocked the door, dived into the fruit-house, and
occupied himself for some moments in recovering his self-possession and
making his selection; then emerging with an armful of pears, he shouted
after Miss Christie Grant, who had got a good way down the walk by this
time.

"I don't deny, ma'am, that these air aggravating now and then, but
anyhow they haven't painted my palings pink and my door pea-green."

Miss Christie returned. She seldom took the part of any children,
excepting for the sake of argument or for family reasons; and she felt
at that moment that the Daniel Mortimers were related to her, and that
these, though they called her "aunt," were not.

"Ye should remember," she observed, with severity, "that ye had already
left your house when they painted it."

"Remember it!" exclaimed the gardener, straightening himself; "ay, ay, I
remember it--coming along the lane that my garden sloped down to, so
that every inch of it could be seen. It had been all raked over, and
there, just out of the ground, growing up in mustard-and-cress letters
as long as my arm, I saw '_This genteel residence to let, lately
occupied by N. Swan, Esq._' I took my hob-nailed boots to them last
words, and I promise you I made the mustard-and-cress fly."

"Well, ye see," ob