"You would not feel like that after half an hour over a hot stove. Now you will be interrupted, in getting to rights, only long enough to eat your dinner. Then Mousie and Merton and Winnie will clear up everything, and be fore night you will feel settled enough to take things easy till to-morrow." "I know your thoughtfulness for me, if not your secret," she said, gratefully, and was again putting things where, from housewifely experience, she knew they would be handy. Mr. and Mrs. Jamison had clung to their old-fashioned ways, and had done their cooking over the open fire, using the swinging crane which is now employed chiefly in pictures. This, for the sake of the picture it made, we proposed to keep as it had been left, although at times it might answer some more prosaic purpose. At the eastern end of the house was a single room, added unknown years ago, and designed to be a bed-chamber. Of late it had been used as a general storage and lumber room, and when I first inspected the house, I had found little in this apartment of service to us. So I had asked Mr. Jones to remove all that I did not care for, and to have the room cleansed, satisfied that it would just suit my wife as a kitchen. It was large, having windows facing the east and south, and therefore it would be light and cheerful, as a kitchen ever should be, especially when the mistress of the house is cook. There Mr. Jones and I set up the excellent stove that I had brought from New York--one to which my wife was accustomed, and from which she could conjure a rare good dinner when she gave her mind to it. Now as she moved back and forth, in such sunlight as the clouding sky permitted, she appeared the picture of pleased content. "It cheers one up to enter a kitchen like this," she said. "It is to be your garden for a time also," I exclaimed to Mousie. "I shall soon have by this east window a table with shallow boxes of earth, and in them you can plant some of your flower-seeds. I only ask that I may have two of the boxes for early cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes, etc. You and your plants can take a sun-bath every morning until it is warm, enough to go out of doors, and you'll find the plants won't die here as they did in the dark, gas-poisoned city flat." "I feel as if I were going to grow faster and stronger than the plants," cried the happy child. Junior and Merton now appeared, each carrying a rabbit. My boy's face, however, was clouded, and he said, a little despondently, "I can't shoot straight--missed every time; and Junior shot 'em after I had fired and missed." "Pshaw!" cried Junior; "Merton's got to learn to take a quick steady sight, like every one else. He gets too excited."