unhappiness, and the first little whisper of "wishing I hadn't been so cross"—or "so unkind," is faintly making its way into the foolish, troubled little hearts. At that moment a sharp or severe word is sadly apt to drown the gentle fairy voice, and to open the door again to all the noisy, ugly imps of obstinacy and pride and unkind resentment, who were just beginning to think they had best slink off.

So this loving and wise—wise because she was loving, and loving because she was wise!—mother said nothing, except—

"I am so sorry not to have come up before, dears, but I have been very busy. Has it been a very dull afternoon for my poor little prisoners?"

"Not so very," said Dolly, slipping off her seat, and sidling up to her mother, who had settled herself on the old rocking-chair by the fire, with a nice comfortable look, as if she were not in a hurry. "Not so very—we read some stories, and I did six rows of my knitting, and Max cut out some more paper animals for poor little Billy Stokes—and—then we went to our windows and began looking out," but here Dolly's voice dropped suspiciously.

"Well," said her mother, "that all sounds very nice. But what happened when you were looking out at your windows?"

"Nothing happened," said Max, slowly.

"Well—what did you see? And what did you say? I can tell from your faces that things haven't gone cheerfully with you all the afternoon—now have they?" said mamma.

"No," Dolly replied eagerly, "they haven't. Only p'r'aps we'd better say nothing more about it. I don't want it all to begin again. If Max likes I'll try to forget all about it, and be friends again."

"I don't mind being friends again," said Max, "I'd rather. But I don't see how we can forget about it—they're sure to be there again to-morrow, and then we couldn't forget about them. Oh, I wonder if they're there still, if it's not too dark to see them," he went on, suddenly darting to the window. "Then mamma could count them, and that would settle it."

"This is very mysterious," said mamma, smiling, "Dolly, you must explain."

But Max was back from the window before Dolly could begin, and his first words were part of the explanation.

"They're gone in," he said in a disappointed tone, "but I don't know that it matters much. For it would have been too dark for you to count them properly, mamma. It was a lot of little pigs, mamma, in Farmer Wilder's field; little black pigs—twelve of them."

"Thirteen," said Dolly.

"No, no!" began Max, but he stopped. "That's it, you see, mamma," he said, in a melancholy tone.

"That's what?" asked mamma.

"The—the quarrel. Dolly will have it there were thirteen, and I'm sure there were only twelve."

"And," said Dolly, laughing a little—though I must say I think it was mischievous of her to have snapped in with that "thirteen"—"nurse heard about 'twelve' and 'thirteen,' but she didn't know what it was about, so she asked us if we couldn't split the difference. Fancy splitting up a poor little pig."

"There isn't one to split, not a thirteen one," said Max, rather surlily.

"Yes there is," retorted Dolly.

Mamma looked at them both.

"My dear children," she said. "You really must be at a loss for something to quarrel about. And after all, you remind me of——"

"What do we remind you of, mamma?" asked both, eagerly, "something about when you were a little girl?"

"No, only of an old story I have heard," said mamma.

"Oh, do tell it," said Max and Dolly.

CHAPTER III

"I wish it was settled about ours," said Dolly, with a sigh. "I—I don't like quarrelling with dear Maxie," and she suddenly buried her face in her mother's lap and began to cry—not loudly, but you could see she was crying by the way her fat little shoulders quivered and shook.

This was too much for Max.

"Dolly," he said, tugging at her till she was obliged to look up, "don't—I can't bear you to be unhappy because of—because of me—do kiss me, Dolly, and don't let us ever think any more about those stupid little black pigs."

So they kissed each other, and it was "all right."

"But," said Dolly, "I'm so afraid it'll begin again when we see them. Could papa ask Farmer Wilder to put them somewhere else, mamma? We can't leave off looking out of our windows, can we?"

"I think it would be rather a babyish way of keeping from quarrelling, to ask to have the temptation to quarrel put away," said mamma. "Besides—it would have to be settled, you see."

"Yes, but," said Dolly, "then one of us would have to be wrong, and I'd rather go on fancying that somehow neither of us was wrong."

"That's rubbish," said Max, "it couldn't be."

"Listen," said mamma; "promise me that neither of you will look out of the window to-morrow morning before you see me. Then if it is really a fine mild day, the doctor says you may both go a little walk."

"Oh, how nice!" interrupted the little prisoners. "And I will take you myself," their mother went on. "Immediately after your dinner—about two o'clock will be the best time. And we will see if we can't settle the question of the thir—no, I had better not say how many—of the little black pigs, in a