teetering on toothpick legs. Then her imagination leaped ahead, and the cream-colored eggs had become eighteen lusty, pin-feathered fowls, worth forty cents a pound in city markets. Peggy’s heart gave a jubilant flutter. Many a fortune had started, she was sure, with less than that basket of eggs.

The work dragged in Dolittle Cottage that morning. It was not that there was so much to do, but there were so many distractions. Peggy’s business enterprise had been the occasion of much animated comment at the breakfast table, and when Peggy mixed some corn meal and carried it out to the woodshed, the girls dropped their various tasks and came flocking after her. The yellow hen was already on her eggs, and she ruffled her feathers in a hostile fashion at the approach of her new owner. Peggy placed her offering conveniently near the nest, raised a warning finger to the chattering girls, as if there had been a baby asleep in the soap-box the yellow hen was occupying, and then tiptoed off, with an air of exaggerated caution.

“You see, she’s very excited and nervous,” Peggy explained, in a subdued voice. “But Joe said she was hungry, and I guess she’ll get off the eggs long enough to eat. Sh! She’s coming now!”

The yellow hen had indeed yielded to the temptation of Peggy’s hasty-pudding. She popped out of the box, gobbled a little of the corn meal, took one or two hasty swallows of water, and then rushed back to her maternal duties. The girls broke into irreverent giggles.

“I shouldn’t call her a beauty,” Ruth declared, as the yellow hen settled down on her eggs, spreading out her feathers till she looked as large as a small turkey.

“Her legs remind me of feather dusters,” Amy remarked pertly.

“It looks to me as if she were trying to revive the fashion of pantalets,” suggested Priscilla.

Peggy was forced to join in the general laugh. “Her legs may not be much to look at, girls,” she admitted, “but those feathers are a sign of Breed.” And with this master-stroke she led the way back to the kitchen, the dog, who had followed them into the woodshed, with every appearance of being at home, stalking at her heels.

“Peggy,” Priscilla inquired suspiciously, “have you fed that dog again this morning?”

“He’s a splendid watch-dog,” replied Peggy, evading a direct answer. “He wouldn’t let Joe come near the house.”

“I suppose that means you’ve decided to add a dog to your menagerie.”

“I don’t think I’ve been consulted about it,” laughed Peggy. “He took matters into his own hands,–or, I should say, teeth.”

“Probably you’ve named him already.”

“Of course. His name is Hobo,” answered Peggy on the spur of the moment, and Priscilla replied with dignity that he looked the part, and returned to her cooling dish water.

“It really isn’t safe picking up a strange dog that way,” Claire murmured, sympathetically, as she reached for a dish towel. “He might turn on us at any minute.” Priscilla whose criticism had been only half serious, found the implication annoying, and when, under her stress of feeling, she set a tumbler down hard, and cracked it, the experience did not tend to relieve her sense of vexation.

“Girls,” Ruth, who was sweeping the porch, put her head in the door, “there’s a boy here who wants to know if we’d like some fresh fish.”

Various exclamations sounding up-stairs and down, indicated that the proposition was a welcome one, and Peggy stepped out of the back door to interview the dealer. A boy in nondescript costume, with a brimless straw hat on the back of his head, held up a string of fish without speaking.

“Yes, I think I’ll like them if they’re fresh and cheap,” said Peggy firmly, resolved to be business-like.

It appeared that the fish had been caught that morning and the price impressed Peggy as extremely reasonable. She was about to conclude the bargain when Priscilla’s echoing whisper summoned her to the screen door.

“Peggy, tell him we’ll buy fish of him several times a week if he’ll clean them. Fish scales are so messy and awful.”

Peggy thought well of the proposition, and the young fisherman offered no objection. With a grunt of acquiescence he seated himself on the steps, pulled out his pocket knife and began operations. Then as Hobo took his stand where he could view proceedings, the boy turned abruptly to Peggy. She saw that his brown eyes were keen, and his features clear-cut. “Why, if he’d only fix up a little,” she thought with surprise, “he’d be quite nice looking.”

“That your dog?” the boy was demanding, and Peggy hesitated, then laughed as she remembered her conversation with Priscilla.

“He seems to think so,” she acknowledged. “He followed me home last night, and he doesn’t have any intention of going away, as far as anybody can see.”

“That dog hasn’t had a square deal,” said the boy with sudden heat. “Dogs don’t have as a rule, but this one’s worse off than most. He used to belong to some folks who lived on the Drierston pike, raised him from a puppy they had, and he saved one of the kids from drowning, one time. More fool he, I say.”

Peggy gasped an expostulation. The boy silenced her with a vindictive gesture of the hand that held the knife.

“You wait till I tell you. Their house burned down and they moved off and they just left the dog behind, as if he had been rubbish. That was more’n a year ago. And ever since he’s been sneaking and skulking and stealing his victuals, and been stoned and driven off with whips, and shot at till it’s a wonder he don’t go ’round biting everybody he sees.”

It was evident that Hobo’s lot had been a hard one, and that through no fault of his own. “Poor fellow,” Peggy said, resolving to atone, as far as a few weeks of kindness could, for that dreadful year of homelessness. “You seem to like animals,” she remarked, finding Hobo’s champion oddly interesting.

The boy cut off the head of a fish with a crunch. “I’d ought to,” he returned grimly. “I’ve got to like something and I don’t like folks.”

“What folks do you mean?”

“Don’t like any folks,” the boy persisted, and slashed on savagely.

Peggy was not prepared to believe in such universal misanthropy on the part of one so young. She guessed it to be a pose, and resolved that she would not encourage it by appearing shocked. “I don’t think you show very good taste,” she observed calmly, “disliking everybody in a lump that way. There are as many kinds of people as there are birds or flowers.”

“You ask any of the folks ’round here about Jerry Morton,” the boy exclaimed. “They’ll tell you what a good-for-nothing lazy-bones he is. They’ll say he isn’t worth the powder and shot to blow him up with.”

Peggy did some rapid thinking. “Are you Jerry Morton?”

“You bet I am.” His tone was defiant.

“Oh, I see,” said Peggy to herself. “People don’t like him, and so he fancies that he doesn’t like people.” This explanation which, by the way, fits more misanthropes than Jerry, resulted in making Peggy sorry for the boy in spite of the unbecoming sullenness of his face at that moment.

“Well, Jerry,” she said gently, “if your neighbors think that of you, I’m sure they are as much mistaken as you are in what you think of them.” She counted out the change into his hand. “This is Thursday, isn’t it? Can you bring us some more fish Saturday?”

“Yes, I’ll bring