they were so lawless and rank, it seemed almost a pity to cut them. Oswyth thought so, but Roberta felt no misgivings—except of her own strength.

The little grey house stood well back from the street under splendid trees, set in the midst of a place so wholly disproportioned to its size that it looked in the present unkempt condition of the grounds not unlike a little island of grey rock, entirely surrounded by turbulent and billowy green water.

Everybody called it "the little grey house," and the name was doubly appropriate, since it did not matter whether one capitalized and emphasized the adjective, and spoke of it as "the little Grey house," or left to the adjective its natural function, and spoke of the tiny home as "the little grey house." For, as to color, it could not well have been greyer. It had once—not recently—been painted grey, but wind and weather had stripped it of its artificial greyness while tinting its clapboards into soft, indelible tints even more conformable to its title.

And, for the rest, Sylvester Grey lived there, as had his forebears for three generations preceding him—all Greys from the beginning. People said that it was "a good thing that Sylvester Grey had had a home left him, for he never could have earned one."

It was true that Mr. Grey had never been able to make much money, nor to keep what little he did make. "He was as good a man as ever lived," people said again, "but he had no faculty." And to lack "faculty" was, indeed, to lack much.

It puzzled and—of course—worried the community in which they lived to know "how the Greys got on." Mrs. Grey could have enlightened it had she chosen, but she did not choose. She hardly realized, however, how much of the explanation lay in her own personality, her mere existence. For she—great-hearted, large-souled woman—had "faculty" enough for two; which was fortunate, as she had to contrive for five.

There was a little income—very slender—of her own, and for the rest she "managed." She had been a Winslow, of Mayflower descent, and Aunt Azraella Winslow, Mrs. Grey's brother's widow—herself a Brown—said, with mingled approval and commiseration, that "when one of us, of the old stock, sets a hand to the plough the corn grows."

Sylvester Grey was a dreamer, handsome, frail, sensitive, and clever. Sometimes his teeming brain brought practical results to his family, but these crystallizations of genius were rarer than was comfortable.

Mr. Grey was perfecting a machine for making bricquettes. There was not a very clear notion in his town—Fayre—what this meant, but it was understood vaguely to be a machine which transformed the coal-dust and waste of the mines into solid little bricks for fuel. Aunt Azraella said "it was exactly like Sylvester to moon over coal-dust while Mary needed kindling-wood."

Oswyth, the oldest girl, whom he had named out of his delight in old Saxon sounds, loved her father tenderly, without understanding him; Prue, petted, pretty little Prue, young for her years, loved him a trifle impatiently, but Roberta, daring, ambitious, active Roberta, loved the dreaming father passionately, and understood that he could not feel the present pinch when visions of a greater good lured him on, understood further that no personal pinch appealed to him very strongly when science led him into her fairyland, and he felt himself her servant. And Roberta alone, of all who loved him, understood the invention to which he was giving his days and many nights, and she believed enthusiastically that some time the bricquette machine would make the family fortune and her father's glory. Yet sometimes her high courage failed, and when the makeshifts and deprivations to which the Greys were condemned bore most heavily upon her she could not help acknowledging—though only to herself—that the happy time was sadly long in coming.

But it was not one of these disheartening days when she set out to cut the grass, and Rob's heart was as gay within her as a sixteen-year-old heart should be, as she looked out on the field which she meant to make a field of victory.

Her bright, dark eyes, which were always flashing with as many changing expressions as there were minutes in the day, danced with mischief; her rippling mouth and chin—Rob's face was all ripples—looked as though the July breeze were playing with them as it played with the lush grass. With both hands she pushed back her dark hair—full of gleams of red and gold in the sunshine—as she ran down the steps and around the corner to fetch the borrowed lawn-mower, for Rob's hair was forever breaking its orderly braided bounds and turning into rakish odds and ends of curls about her brow and ears. She came back triumphantly, pushing the lawn-mower around the corner, and it rattled on the old flagged walk as she tipped it up on its rear wheels and dodged the box bordering the paths.

"Who's first?" she cried. "Age and muscle, or beauty and babyhood?"

"B. and B.," said Prue, unblushingly owning up to both facts as one well acquainted with the value of her big dark eyes and contrasting veil of golden hair, and one made thoroughly to realize that she was the youngest. "Give it to me, Rob; I want the first cut."

"'Give me the dagger!' Here you are, then, Lady Macbeth. You'll find the first cut anything but tender—you speak as if it were turkey." And Rob gave the mower-handle into Prue's eager fingers.

Prue ran lightly down the flagged walk with her prize. "I shall begin at the gate," she announced, "so if we don't quite finish it to-day people who go by can see we are beginning to get our grass cut."

Oswyth laughed and groaned. "Finish it to-day! Cut the whole place!" she exclaimed.

Oswyth, with her sweet, placid face, smooth, shining brown hair, calm blue eyes and quiet lips, was unlike either of the others. Pretty she was in her demure way, and no one minded if her soft cheeks were a bit too plump, since their tint was really the "peaches and cream" of which we read. Wythie was a most womanly and wholesome little woman, the sort of girl one sees at first glance must comfort the mother who possesses her.

Prue, undismayed by Wythie's dismay, turned the lawn-mower sharply to the right for her first bold plunge into the grass—and stopped. The dry, stout stalks resisted her onslaught, and the little girl pushed, pulled back, pushed again, bending over the handle till her flying, golden hair fell forward into the yellowing grass, but the machine would not stir. Prue dropped the handle, straightened her slender form, and, with one movement of both hands, disclosing a face already flushed and speckled by her efforts, threw back her hair and threw up the game.

"I can't budge it, Rob!" she panted. "No one could."

"Want to try, Wythie, or shall I?" asked Rob.

"Want to? I don't quite see why anyone should want to," said Oswyth, "but I suppose we each must, so here goes." And she heroically came forward to take her turn, laying her dimpled and well-cushioned little pink palms on the cross-bar of the handle somewhat gingerly.

She cut a glorious though short swath of four feet in length, happening on more tender grass, and having more strength than Prue, but here she, too, met her Waterloo, for the mower stood still, balking as effectually as all the donkeys in Ireland.

"There's no use in your taking it, Rob," Wythie gasped, after turning hither and thither with no result. "If you cut a few feet it would be the most that you could do, and what difference would it make out of so much?"

"You don't suppose I'll yield without striking a blow?"