served Miss Christie, who was perfectly serious,
"there is great truth in your saying that those children did too much as
they pleased; but ye must consider that Mr. Mortimer didn't like to
touch any of them, because they were not his own."

"That's just it, ma'am, and Mrs. Mortimer didn't like to touch any of
them because they _were her own;_ so between the two they got to be, I
don't say as bad as these, but--" Here he shook his head, and leaning his
back to the fruit-house door, began diligently to peel the fruit for an
assembly, silent, because eating. "As for Master Giles," he went on,
more to torment the old lady than to disparage the gentleman in
question, "before ever he went to school, he chalked a picture that he
called my arms on the tool house-door, three turnips as natural as life,
and a mad kind of bird flourishing its wings about, that he said was a
swan displayed. Underneath, for a _morter_, was wrote, 'All our geese
air swans.' Now what do you call that for ten years old?"

"Well, well," said Aunt Christie, "that's nearly twenty years ago."

Then the fruit being all finished, N. Swan, Esq., shut up his
clasp-knife, and the story being also finished, his audience ran away,
excepting Miss Christie, to whom he said--

"But I was fond of those children, you'll understand, though they were
powerful plagues."

"Swan," said the old lady, "ye'll never be respectit by children. You're
just what ye often call yourself, _soft_."

"And what's the good of being rough with 'em, ma'am? I can no more make
'em sober and sensible than I could straighten out their bushes of curly
hair. No, not though I was to take my best rake to it. They're powerful
plagues, bless 'em! but so far as I can see, we're in this world mainly
to bring them forrard in it. I remember when my Joey was a very little
chap, he was playing by me with a tin sword that he was proud of. I was
sticking peas in my own garden, and a great hulking sergeant came by,
and stopped a minute to ask his road. 'Don't you be afraid of me,' says
Joey, very kind. 'I won't hurt 'e.' That man laughed, but the water
stood in his eyes. He'd lost such a one, he said. Children air
expensive, but it's very cutting to lose 'em. I've never seen any of the
Mortimers in that trouble yet, though."

"And you've been many a long year with them too," observed Miss
Christie.

"Ay, ma'am. Some folks air allers for change, but I've known when I was
well off and they've known w