winter they had managed to effect one season-ticket, and the girls had gone alternately, in a neighbor's company; this winter Frederick was at home, and two tickets were desirable.

“Let us buy three tickets to the lyceum now,” said Margaret.

“Same money would buy three turkeys,” answered Helen, “and we're close on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

“Yes, Nelly,” cried Tommy, who was thoroughly tired of bread and molasses, “buy the turkeys.”

“Be quiet, child,” said the mother; “you can't go to the lyceum, you know; so don't be selfish.”

“Well, which would be best,” meditated Margaret, who had a way of spending other people's money as well as her own,—“turkeys or tickets?”

“The turkeys will feast the whole family, the tickets only us three,” said Helen.

“And then our bonnets are so shabby,” said Margaret.

“Buy the turkeys, mother,” pleaded Tommy, piteously.

“Hush now, Tommy! You've no voice in the debate,” declared Margaret. “You're not a member of the Lyceum Society.”

“But I'm a member of the Turkey Society,” urged Tommy, as a finishing argument.

The result of the conference was, that, as Frederick's shoes were fast approaching the character of sandals with leathern thongs, they were surreptitiously subtracted from his bedside at night, and their place filled by a pair of stout boots, which would carry him well into the winter. That was yesterday. Meanwhile, to-day, no coals; no kindlings, if there had been; last year's bill due, and dunned for; winter upon their heels; the night growing chilly. Helen wrapped a cloak round little Sarah, and gave her her precious black rosary to play with, and bade Tommy take excellent care of her, and for reward he need recite only half his usual spelling-lesson when she came back. Then she ran up the hill behind the house,—she had reached that pass that she did not care whether the neighbors saw or not,—and fell to gathering sticks. Once the spot had been a wood-lot, now long since dispeopled of its dryads; a young sapling or two had sprung up in place of the old growth, and boughs and twigs were blown there in the storms. Helen came down with her arms full, and trailing a couple of great branches behind her. These, at the back door, she broke up, reserving larger pieces for the parlor blaze, and the small bits for a good kitchen fire; and, that done, decided to catch a couple of her choice chickens, and decapitate them, although she shut her eyes and cut her own thumb in the course of the procedure; these chickens, which were her special property, had been reserved by her for some occasion, and when would there be a better than Frederick and her mother returning from so late and unconscionable a jaunt, and doubtless shivering with the cold? This accomplished, and the savory stew simmering over the stove, Helen washed her hands, that had nearly lost their patrician shape and whiteness, took off her apron, and withdrew to the parlor. There she found that Master Tommy had, some time since, left little Sarah to her own devices, and she had forthwith broken the string, and scattered the beads of the rosary in every direction upon the floor, while he stood breathing upon a distant window-pane, and drawing pictures with his finger-tip on the groundwork thus effected, humming the while one of his favorite tunes to himself.

“Now, Tommy,” said Helen, “I'll hear your lesson.”

“No, you won't,” sang Tommy to his tune.

“Why not?”

“'Cause I can't say it.”

“Then we'll learn it together. F-a-t-h, what does that spell?”

“Don't know,” said Tommy, his finger in his mouth.

“See now if you can't remember,” urged Helen, giving him each letter phonetically.

“Don't want to know,” said Tommy.

Here, little Sarah, who had heard the lesson many times, informed him what the desired syllable ought to be, and inferred the rest herself. Whereupon Helen proceeded to the next word. But there Tommy proved obdurate, not only didn't know, and didn't want to know, but refused to hear, and presented such a fearful example to his younger sister, that his elder one had no resource but to transfer the cloak from Sarah to Tommy, and to shut him up in the dark closet. That done, she laid the sticks together in the grate, that was never made for sticks, and blew up a nice blaze, that warmed and lighted all the damp and dark old room; and, taking little Sarah in her arms, rocked and sung her away to sleep.

It was a dismal room, and had been long deserted,—possibly owing to its former dreariness, and possibly to the report of its haunted space and shadow; for over the chimney-piece was the panel with the pale, proud face of old General Fotherington's dead wife painted on it, which every midnight he was once believed to return and visit. But when other parts of the house had fallen into hopeless disrepair, Helen had taken Tommy's little hatchet, and had felled the lofty lilac-hedge that obscured all the southern windows of the room, had cleaned the old paint, made good use of a bucket of white-wash, reset the broken glass herself, and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,—for she had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her shiftless father, when put to his trumps, had sold to adorn the halls of some upstart with forefathers.

“Tommy,” said she softly, when little Sarah slept, “can you tell me what w-a-t-e-r spells?”

“No,” said the stolid Tommy.

“Is it dark in there, Tommy?” asked she, half relenting, and yet half wishing to excite his fears enough to conquer his obduracy.

“I don't know,” answered Tommy, quite willing to converse, “I've got my eyes shut.”

“Very well,” said Helen, and went on with her low lullaby, which Tommy stoutly, but ineffectually, attempted to join. The wind was beginning to rise and clatter at the casements, and sing its own tune round the gable-corner; the dark had quite fallen, and the room was gloomy and vivid by turns with the fitful flashes of the firelight.

“Nelly,” said Tommy, wheedlingly, and shaking the lock of the closet, “I wish you'd give me some. I'm real sirsty.”

“Some what?” asked Helen, very willing to compromise.

“Some w-a-t-e-r. I'm so sirsty.”

“Pronounce it, Tommy, and you shall come out and have some.”

“I don't know how to,” was the atrocious answer.

“And some chicken-broth as well as some water, if you'll only tell me what those five letters spell.”

But there was nothing but silence in reply from Tommy, and Helen resumed her song.

“It's real damp in here,” said Tommy pretty soon, beginning to cough furiously. “I'm getting a stiff neck.”

“You have one already,” said Helen; and, laying little Sarah down, she went to put on her apron, to attend to her stew, to bring in the cloth and the tray of dishes, and to spread the supper-table in the warm room,—set out near the fire, the worn white linen, the sparse silver, the rare and gay old china, of which they used every day what would have decked out a modern drawing-room, all clean and glittering as if viands were various and plentiful as color and sparkle. That all done, again Cinderella sat down before the fire.

“'Elen!” said Tommy then in a muffled tone, having given the door another premonitory shake, and as if his darkness induced metaphysics, “how many yesterdays have there been and how many to-morrows are there going to be?”

“I'll tell you, Tommy, when you tell me what those letters