a frequent victim.

The Rutherfords were very much alike, brown-skinned, brown-haired, blue-eyed boys, with honesty and kindliness shining from their fine faces. Mrs. Grey made up her mind about them on the spot—as she usually did on meeting strangers. "Nice creatures!" she thought, and laughed as she surveyed Bartlemy.

"I doubt that you could raise him—unaided," she said. And the boys, in their turn, mentally labelled her: "Nice woman."

"But none of you is precisely stunted," added Mrs. Grey, looking up from her own considerable altitude into Basil's, and then into Bruce's face, both of which topped her by several inches.

"Bruce is five feet eleven, good measure, and I am five feet ten," said Basil. "All the Rutherfords grow rank."

"Like our grass," added Roberta, who had been quiet as long as she could be. "There's nothing but length—and poor quality—to the grass, though," she added, with a wicked look, to which she served an immediate antidote by pouring lemonade into the three rapidly emptying glasses.

"You are new neighbors, I think," said Mrs. Grey, calmly removing a caterpillar from her cuff, and thereby rising high in Bartlemy's estimation, who was an embryo naturalist and scorned nerves.

"We're here for a time—we came three weeks ago. We've taken the Caldwell place, and our guardian put us here with a tutor to get ready for college," said Basil. "I'm in my eighteenth year, but I'd like to wait for Bart if I could. And he's not as stupid as he looks—we think we can enter together in a year; we'd like to keep on side by side as long as we can—we've done it so far."

"How pleasant that is to hear!" cried Mrs. Grey, heartily. "I'm sure you'll gain far more than you lose by waiting. You speak as though you were alone; are you boys all there are in the family?"

"Our father is alive," said Basil, "but he is in the navy, and he's usually about the farthest father I know—just now he's in Japan for two years more. Our mother died when Bart was six. We wish she hadn't—" Basil stopped short. He had no idea that he was going to say this, but the look that sprang into Mrs. Grey's eyes when he alluded to his mother's loss had slightly upset him.

Mrs. Grey understood. "I wish that she could have stayed to be proud of her three tall sons," she said. "But perhaps Wythie and Rob and Prue can coax you here to share in the mother feeling. We're fond of motherliness in the little grey house, Basil, and we do have good times in it. I must run away, or there will be a sad time in it when the girls come in hungry. They will tell you about our little grey house and its Grey denizens. Will you come often, and help us have good times?" She included the three lads in her warm glance, and quick affection leaped back at her from the three pairs of dark blue eyes. Mrs. Grey mothered everything that came near her, being one of the sort of women with a genuine talent for loving. She longed to bless and protect all creation, and fell to planning as she spoke how to give these motherless lads the womanly sympathy they must want in their setting out on the battle of life.

"Indeed, we will come," said Bruce, speaking suddenly and for the first time.

"You're very good, Mrs. Grey," said Basil, quietly, but he pressed her hand till it ached, and she knew that he had read aright and would accept her invitation.

"The Greys," began Roberta, in a perfectly dispassionate, narrative tone, as her mother went toward the house, "are exceedingly nice people—I can truly say I know none whom I like better. They are of most ancient, trailing arbutus descent——"

"Rob!" ejaculated Oswyth, reproachfully, not knowing how their new acquaintances would take this nonsense.

"Fact! Isn't the trailing arbutus the Mayflower?" said Rob, unabashed. "It's a more appropriate name, too, because the descendants of the Pilgrims have 'trailed clouds of glory as they came,' like the soul in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality—I trust you have heard of Wordsworth, little boys? If you doubt that the Greys are of Mayflower descent on the maternal side, just go ask their aunt-in-law, Azraella Winslow."

"Oh, Rob; how can you?" cried Oswyth, distressed.

"Why, that's true, Wythie; they won't have to ask her, will they?" said Rob, innocently.

"No, don't ask; just listen. Well, the Greys are poor, but respectable. I hope that they are very respectable, for I can testify from accurate knowledge that they are very poor. They have lots of books, worn shabby, but as good as ever, and the two oldest girls study hard at home—as well as they can—but the youngest they contrive to keep at school. The second daughter is digging away at German alone, and she wishes that everything wasn't divided off into masculine and feminine genders, like a Quaker meeting. However, my brethren, this is not history—only natural history, maybe. To return to the Grey Annals: The dear father Grey is a genius, and he is inventing something so clever and valuable that one day the Greys will be rich. The darling mother Grey is perfect, and a heroine, and nobody on earth could love her enough. The Grey girls help her do the housework, and they economize—economize terrific! But they do have fun, and they're happy, and when you came along they were economically trying to cut their own grass, under the rash leadership of the second daughter, and the grass would not succumb to a mower. And that brings my story right up to date—it may be continued in our next issue."

The Rutherford boys evidently understood perfectly how to take Roberta; there was no occasion for Oswyth's anxiously puckered brow, nor Prue's flushed cheeks and mortified look. All three boys recognized pluck and admired it in the brief outline sketch of the Greys which Rob had given them. Bruce especially, Rob's senior by half a year, as Basil was Wythie's, liked the spirit which she displayed, and which was largely his own sort of courage.

"Our next issue is now ready for the press," he said. "The three Rutherfords—all B's, and so naturally inclined to be busy—were coming down the road as the Grey girls struggled with the stalled mower, and resolved to rescue the brave damsels. High and low they sought till they had found three scythes, or scythes and sickles. Armed with these they marched down upon the grey house, cut the grass with wild hallos, and returned triumphant to the Caldwell place. Come on, Bas; hurry up, Bart; we'll shave the grey place clean."

"Oh, you three long angels!" cried Rob, starting up rapturously as the three Rutherfords arose to carry out Bruce's suggestion with prompt enthusiasm. "I said when I saw you coming that I wished you'd cut this tough grass for us, but I never thought of it again. Wait a minute; I want to speak to Mardy."

She darted to the house and came flying back again from around the rear corner before the others had time to wonder why she had gone.

"It's all right; I knew she'd say yes," Rob panted. "Come to-morrow afternoon, if you really want to do it, and we'll ask Frances down, and have some sort of supper on the newly shaved lawn, among the sweet-smelling grass—even this weedy grass will be fragrant, newly mown. Will you do that?"

"It will be great!" said the boys, heartily. "Of course we'll come." And they bade the Grey girls good-by, with much satisfaction in their first call.

"Nice girls," said Basil, as they swung up the road, the tallest, Bartlemy, in the middle, an arm resting on each tall brother's shoulder. "Which is the nicest?"

"Hard to say," began Bartlemy, but Bruce cut him short with decision, saying:

"Prue's as pretty as a picture;