WHAT days those were that followed the arrival of the boys home. In Shorty's hard, rough life he had never so much as dreamed of such immaculate housekeeping as Mrs. Klegg's. He had hardly been in speaking distance of such women as Si's mother and sisters. To see these bright, blithe, sweet-speeched women moving about the well-ordered house in busy performance of their duties was a boundless revelation to him. It opened up a world of which he had as little conception as of a fairy realm. For the first time he began to understand things that Si had told him of his home, yet it meant a hundredfold more to him than to Si, for Si had been brought up in that home. Shorty began to regard the Deacon and Si as superior beings, and to stand in such awe of Mrs. Klegg and the girls that he became as tongue-tied as a bashful school-boy in their presence. It amazed him to hear Si, when the girls would teaze him, speak to them as sharply as brothers sometimes will, and just as if they were ordinary mortals. "Si, you orter to be more careful in talkin' to your sisters," he remonstrated when they were alone. "You've bin among rough men so long that you don't know how to talk to real ladies." "O, come off," said Si, petulantly. "What's a-eatin you. You don't know them girls as well as I do. Particularly Maria. She'll run right over you if you let her. She's one o' the best girls that ever breathed, but you've got to keep a tight rein on her. The feller that marries her's got to keep the whip-hand or she'll make him wish that he'd never bin born." Shorty's heart bounded at the thought of any man having the unspeakable happiness of marrying that peerless creature, and then having the meanness not to let her do precisely as she wanted to. Both the boys had been long enough in the field to make that plain farm home seem a luxurious palace of rest. The beds were wonders of softness and warmth, from which no unwelcome reveille or cross-grained Orderly-Sergeant aroused them with profane threats of extra duty. Instead, after peeping cautiously through the door to see that they were awake, the girls would come in with merry greeting, bowls of warm water, and soft, white towels fragrant of the lawn. Maria would devote herself to helping Shorty get ready for breakfast, and Amanda to Si. Shorty trembled like a captured rabbit when Maria first began her ministrations. All his blood rushed to his face, and he tried to mumble something about being able to take care of himself, which that straightforward young woman paid not the slightest attention to. After his first fright was over there was a thrilling delight about the operation which electrified him. When the boys were properly washed and combed, Mrs. Klegg, her kind, motherly face beaming with consciousness of good and acceptable service, would enter with a large tray, laden with fragrant coffee, delicious cream, golden butter, her own peerless bread and bits of daintily-broiled chicken.