Marm Lisa

dventure upon them. It was accompanied by a violent reaction against all the laws of God and man

ally conducting the day's exercises; judged by the light of subsequent events, all of these suppositions might easily have been true. During the morning they so demeaned t

occurred before, save when Pacific had a certain memorable attack of mumps that would have

thing is wrong?' as

sion is that she was alone, and stayed only a moment. At any rate, I was very busy and did not speak

f it swept the earth! She may possibly have taken them to join a band; they must be getting to a proper age for membership. At any r

nd the fact that Mrs. Grubb was seen talking to them as she went into the yard, a little after twelve o'clock. Rhoda naturally

he house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto awaited her. Some instinct of fear or secrecy led her to go quietly through all the rooms and search the playground without telling any one of her trouble. That accomplished fruitlessly, she fled home again, in the vain hope of finding the children in

the gallery above. Mrs. Grubb sat in the centre of the stage, with a glass of water, a bouquet of roses, and a bundle of papers and tracts on the table by her side. In the audience were twenty or thirty women and a dozen men, their laps filled, and their pockets bulging, with propaganda. They stood at intervals to ask superfluous or un

heights in a kind of echo that held the tone, but not the words. The voice made her drowsy, for she was already worn out with emotion, but she roused her

and its only fascination lay in the fact that the workwomen screamed with laughter at the twins' conversation, and after leading them to their utmost length, teasing and goading them into a towering passion, would stuff them with nuts or dates or cheap sweetmeats. The coat-shop was two or three miles from the hall, and it was closing time and quite dark wh

can't you?' he muttered, 'and no

become of them? Were they lost, too? And the umbrella that she used to hold until her arm ached, and the poor, pale, weeping mother always lying on a bed,--were they all gone together? Her head buzzed with worrying, unrelated thoughts, so that she put up her hands and held it in place on her shoulders as she shuffled wearily along. A heavy, dripping mist began to gather and fall, and she shivered in the dampness, huddling herself together and leaning against the houses for a shelter. She sat down on the curb-stone and tried to think, staring haggardly at the sign on

e halls, lock the door, and descend the stairs to her own rooms in the basement. The light from the street lamps shone in at the two end windows, so that the room was not in utter darkness. She would lie down here and die with Mr. Grubb and the babies and the umbrella. At

ning, and the bit of cardboard was torn and soiled and bent. Lisa looked at it with a maternal and a prophetic eye. She could see the firm line of Rhoda's lip as she bore down upon the destructive urchin. She could almost hear the bright challenging to

f the clay bird's-nest that Pacific had modelled--such a lovely bird's- nest that it had been kept for the cabinet. She carried her treasures over to the old-fashioned lounge where the babies took th

lightning-flashes; and the tiny points would twinkle and wink and laugh and blink whenever she turned her head. She would smile, and everything would suddenly be clear; she would sp

bewilderment, faded little by little, little by little, till at length a blessed sleep crept