The first winter in Halifax passed very pleasantly to the Sherwoods. The winter sports were new, and keenly enjoyed, and the "Sherwood twins" soon became as good skaters as those who had practised the art for years. Yet no one must imagine that everything ran as smoothly as clockwork in the Sherwood household, for there are few families who can boast of such perfect regulations that there is _never_ a jar. Mrs. Sherwood had been only too willing to throw off all responsibility and place her duties on Aunt Jennie's shoulders, but there were many things that must of necessity be left to Mrs. Sherwood herself, and when such things were put off indefinitely they were apt to prove annoying; consequently, when "patience ceased to be a virtue," the domestic atmosphere was sometimes cleared by a small-sized storm. There are also times when domestic helps are apt to be exasperating in the extreme, and a word of rebuke or remonstrance is like a match to a can of gunpowder; the powder is apt to go off, and the girl just as likely, and both leave an unpleasantness behind them. Queer, too, that both are apt to go off at the most unexpected and inconvenient moment; but so it is. The Sherwood family were not exempt from this experience, for Biddy raised a storm because Dinah seemed to be made more of than she was herself. No explanations or smooth words would bridge over the difficulty. She refused to stay in a house where "a big nager could stay in the room wid the missus and hould the baby as long as she plased;" so she left the house, and quite suddenly, too. This disarranged household matters somewhat for awhile, as it was some time before a capable servant could be found, and Mrs. Sherwood was obliged to exert herself a little and attend to the wants of the baby, while Dinah filled the vacant place in the kitchen. But rheumatism had laid its torturing clutches on poor old Dinah's limbs, and she could not be expected to get through the same amount of work that Biddy accomplished, so the help of the twins was frequently necessary to keep agoing the domestic machinery. This was no hardship to Dexie; but Gussie, oh dear! it was just horrible to have to wash up the breakfast dishes, and to polish the silver. And the rooms _never_ needed to be dusted so often before, that she was sure! and wherever the dusters went to after she was done with them was a daily mystery. Dexie offered to solve this trying enigma, but Gussie's wrath waxed hot when she read the words which Dexie printed in large letters on a piece of wrapping-paper and stuck on the wall, for the moral was obvious-- "_There is a place for everything_; THEREFORE, _put the dusters back in their own place when you are done with them, and you will be sure to find them again._ "(NO CHARGE FOR THIS ADVICE.)"