Knock! Knock! Knock! I've been before this block More than half an hour, I should say; I am standing in the sun, while Miss Lucy lingers on, Talking of the fashions of the day. It is a trick you know, she taught me long ago, But now I am in earnest, not in play; And the world is very wide, to a horse that isn't tied, I've a mind to go and ask the price of hay. There's a nail in my shoe that needs fixing too, And I want a drink more than I can say; How I could run, with my dandy harness on! But it's such a mean thing to run away. Rap! Tap! Tap! That's enough to break a nap-- There she comes, and is laughing at the way I brought her to the door, when she wouldn't come before, That's a trick worth playing any day. MRS. GIMSON'S SUMMER BOARDERS. It was recess at the school-house at the cross roads, and three country girls gathered round a companion, whose unhappy face showed that something had gone wrong. "Is this your last day at school, Lucindy?" asked Carrie Hess, a girl of fifteen, and the eldest of the three sisters. "Yes, this is my last day, thanks to the summer boarders. I can't bear to think of them. I hate them!" "Will you have to work harder than you do now?" asked Freda, who was next younger to Carrie. "I don't mind the work so much as I do their impudent airs, and their stuck-up ways. I wont be ordered around, and if Auntie thinks I'm going to be a black slave, she'll find she's mistaken." Lucindy's face flushed, and she appeared to be greatly in earnest. "I'd be glad to have them come to our house, they have such nice clothes," said Lena, the youngest and most mischievous. "Yes, it's very nice, I must say, to go around in old duds, and have a girl that's not a whit better in any way than you, only she's been to a city school and has a rich father, turn up her nose at you, and perhaps make fun of you, with her white dresses and her silk dresses, and her gaiter boots." "Can't we come to your house any more? Can't we come to play?" asked Carrie. "Oh, can't we come?" said the other two, almost in a breath. "No, Auntie told me this morning, that I must tell you and the rest of the girls, that it wouldn't be convenient to have you come, as you have done; you are not stylish enough for Miss Hattie Randolph to associate with, I suppose." The girls looked really disappointed. Lucindy was a great favorite, and a leader, fearless and successful in all escapades that required originality and coolness, and her company would be sorely missed. Her aunt had indulged her in all the dress and amusement she could afford, and her companions had always been welcome to visit at the house, but now there was a necessity for her services, and play could not be indulged in so often for the rest of the summer, as the household needed the avails, if not the presence of summer boarders. "Is she older than we?" asked Carrie.