yesterday," Hubert said.

"What are they like?" Hope and Theodora asked in a breath.

"They were driving past the post-office, when I went after the noon mail. They went by so fast I couldn't see much, though."

"How did you know who it was?" Theodora inquired, rolling over till she could look up into her brother's face.

"Mr. Saunders asked me if I knew they were our new neighbors. They came Tuesday, but they stayed at the hotel till yesterday morning, while the house was being put in order."

"What did they look like?" Teddy demanded.

"Like all the rest of the world, as far as I could see."

"Stop teasing, Hu, and tell us," Hope urged.

"Really, I don't know much about them," Hubert returned, with an air of lazy indifference. "Look out, Ted, you're tipping over Hope's basket. One would think we'd never had any new neighbors before, from the way you act."

"We haven't, for ages. Tell us, Hu, there's a dear, what are they like?"

"I honestly didn't have a chance to see them, Ted. She's tall and pretty, and has a lot of fuzzy light red hair."

"Of course she was in mourning," Hope said.

"Yes, I suppose so. At least, she had a pile of black stuff hanging down her back. I don't see why women should pin a black shawl over their heads, when somebody dies; but then—"

"How old is the son?" Theodora interrupted.

"About our ages, I should say."

"Did he look ill?" Hope asked pitifully.

"No; only pale."

"What's the matter with him, anyway?" Theodora inquired, as she reached out for her brother's hand and fell to playing with his slender brown fingers.

"Papa told me he was jammed into a corner, with a lot of stuff on top of him, and his back is hurt so he can't walk."

"Ugh!" Theodora wriggled. "How horrid! Won't he get over it?"

"Sometime; but it will take a good while."

"How did they happen to come here?" Hope said.

"They wanted to move into the country. Dr. Parker is their regular doctor, and he advised them to try papa, so they came here to be near him. Papa told me, on the way to the station, the day he went. He had a great, thick letter from Dr. Parker all about it."

"And so they are really in the house. It has been empty so long that I can't realize it," Hope observed thoughtfully. "Of course, if he were a girl, it would make more difference to us."

"I don't see why," Theodora said, as she pulled off the ribbon from one of her braids, and untied the bow.

"Why, because—Don't you see? He can't come to us, and we can't go there; that is, none of us but Hu."

"I don't see why," Theodora said again.

"It wouldn't be proper," Hope said primly. "You can't go to call on a boy, Teddy. Hu will go over, in a day or two, though."

"Not if he knows himself," Hubert returned. "I don't like freaks. They make me squirmy, and I never know what to say to them."

"Then you're a pig," Theodora answered, with Saxon frankness. "It won't be decent, if we don't try to make it pleasant for him. He's a stranger to everybody, and shut up so he can't have any fun."

"I really think you ought to go, Hu," Hope said gently.

"I don't hanker to," he returned laughingly. "Let Ted go, if she wants to."

"But she is a girl—" Hope began.

"Not more than half," Hubert interrupted, with a laughing grimace at his twin sister, who stood by the sofa, looking scornfully down at them.

"You can do as you like, you two," she said. "It isn't a question of whether it's proper or not; it is simple human kindness, and as soon as I can, Hope McAlister, I intend to get acquainted with him. You've got to go over there, Hu, and take me with you, just as soon as papa comes home." She tied her ribbon with a defiant jerk.

Rather to her surprise, Hubert came to her support.

"You're all right, Teddy; go ahead. If papa is willing, Hope, I don't see why she can't go to see him whenever she feels like it. It isn't in my line. I always feel as if people smashed up in that way ought to sing hymns all the time, and talk about Heaven. That's the way they do in Sunday-school books, you know, and they never have tempers and things. I shouldn't know what to say to that kind of a fellow, and I should only make a mess of it; but if Ted wants to play the good Samaritan to him, let her. For my part, I like whole people, or none at all." He squared his shoulders and took a deep, full breath, as he spoke, in all the pride of his boyish strength.

"We're bound to see a good deal of him anyway," Theodora urged, a shade less hotly. "Right next door and a patient of papa's, it would be queer not to pay any attention to him. He's all alone, too, and there are such a lot of us. I don't want to do anything out-of-the-way, Hope, but I do wish we could get acquainted with him."

"Wait till papa comes home, dear," Hope said, with the gentleness which had gained her so many victories over her tempestuous young sisters. "That will only be two or three weeks, and he will know what is the best thing to do."

"Maybe, unless the new Madame is a prig," Theodora said restively. "She may be worse than you are, Hope; but I doubt it. Never mind," she added sagely to herself, as she left the room; "it is two weeks till then, and there's plenty of chance for things to happen, before they get home."

CHAPTER TWO

Lying far at the side of the little suburban town, the McAlisters' grounds were of a size and beauty which entitled them to be ranked as one of the few so-called "places" that dominated the closely-built streets of the town. The land ran all up and down hill, here coaxed into a smooth-cropped lawn, there carpeted with the moss and partridge vines which had been left to grow over the rocks in undisturbed possession. Here and there, too, were outcrops of the rock, ragged, jutting ledges full of the nooks and crannies which delight the souls of children from one generation to another. The grounds had been, for the most part, left as nature had made them, full of little curves and hillocks and dimples; but the great glory of the place lay in its trees. No conventional elms and maples were they, but the native trees of the forest, huge-bodied chestnuts, tall, straight-limbed oaks, jagged hickories which blazed bright gold in the autumn and shot back the sunlight from every leafy twig, and an occasional cedar or two, from which came the name of the place, The Savins.

Less than a year after his first marriage, Dr. McAlister had bought the place, going far out of the town for the purpose. At that time, he was regarded as little short of a maniac, to prefer land on the ridge to the smooth, conventional little lawns of the middle of the town, where one house was so like another that the inhabitants might have followed the example of the Mad Tea Party and moved up a place, without suffering any inconvenience from the change. It was years before the townspeople dropped the story of Mrs. McAlister's first attempt to choose a site for the house, of her patiently sitting on top of the rail fence, while her husband borrowed a hatchet and manfully whacked away at the underbrush, to clear a path to admit her to her new domain.

It was not till several years later that the house was built, and the McAlisters actually took possession of their new home. Phebe was a baby then, and the twins were so young that Theodora formed an abiding impression that Indians were prone to lurk behind a certain trio of great chestnut-trees at the far side of the grounds. The house was not impressive. It stood on