When the sound of homeward footsteps Echoes through the quiet street, Or the wayside grass is trampled By the tread of hurrying feet,-- Then, in stately shining windows, Hung with misty laces white, Or in low-roofed cottage doorways Opening out into the night; With their merry voices silent, And their playthings put aside, Bright eyes, blue or black or hazel, All with eager watching wide, Stand a hundred little maidens, Looking out beneath the stars, Waiting in a hundred households For a hundred dear papas; And the quick, familiar footsteps Nearer through the darkness come, Till a hundred happy voices Cry at once their "Welcome home!" THE PIGS' CHOWDER-PARTY. DOWN at Cape Cod there lived two merry little twin brothers. Very full of fun and mischief were they, and seldom quiet except when they were asleep. [Illustration] One day their mamma bought some clams. She was going to have a chowder for supper. For safe, cool keeping she put her basket of clams on the grass, under a great tree. [Illustration] Johnnie and Willie stood by, and heard all that their mamma said about it to auntie. They just looked and heard it all. Their baby faces--for they were only a little over three years old--were as solemn as good old Deacon Pitts', who said he "didn't see why people laughed when there was no occasion." These two baby-rogues put their bits of plump little hands into the pockets of their pretty white aprons. When mamma and auntie went into the house Nurse Jane sat down on the piazza, knitting in hand, to keep an eye on them. They began to play bo-peep behind the lilac-bushes. When Nurse Jane dropped off to sleep, as she should not have done, then it was that these two small men turned their thoughts to other matters. First, there was a wild chase after butterflies. Pretty soon they trotted down the walk to see Mistress Piggy and her three lazy, grunting children. When the pigs heard voices they, too, piped up, squealing out, as Johnnie afterwards told his mamma, "Give _us_ some! give _us_ some!" So at that call the laddies pelted Mistress Piggy and her children with tufts of grass. Straying down the walk for more, they spied the basket of clams. In a minute they were dragging the damp basket over the grass, tugging away at the heavy load until their cheeks were scarlet. Then such a pelting as Mistress Piggy and her family had. But they were wild with the supper. They crunched and ate until all the clams were gone. A pile of shells lay by the trough where their food was usually put. "They had the chowder," Willie said. Mamma and auntie had no chowder _that_ night! I do not know what mamma said to her small boys, but I do know that they went very early to bed. FRANCES P. CHAPLIN. PUSSY'S ADOPTED CHILDREN.