It is one of those first bright, pleasant days, so welcome after the rains and clouds that follow the long siege of winter. With the sunbeams so warm, and the air so soft and balmy, who can choose to stay indoors? The Lieutenant draws his chair out to the porch, and is presently joined by Harry, who mounts the railing and proceeds to relate an adventure he had the other night. “You see we were out on the lake, fishing—a lot of us, and we’d caught about a dozen trout, when up come a storm—a regular gale. Boat capsized; out we went into the water. Rain pouring down in torrents, and so dark you couldn’t see your hand before you. Tell you we had to swim for it. But we got ashore at last, and they took us in at a house close by, and dried our clothes for us, and gave us some supper, and we had a regular jolly time of it, after all.” “Yes, I heard about that excursion of yours from another source, and about a boy by the name of Harry who saved another boy from drowning.” “No! did you, though? Well, you see he didn’t know much about swimming, and it was my doings, his going with us, and if anything had happened to him I’d have been to blame. But, I tell you, I thought one time there we were both goners, sure. Hallo, Edith!” “See my new hat!” she cries, climbing up the steps. “I and mamma bought it down street this very morning. See, it’s all trimmed with blue ribbons!” “Yes, it’s really pooty. There comes Marie Maross with her instruction book; she’s been taking a music lesson. Say, Marie, come in and sit down, won’t you? You look tired. Professor cross this morning?” “Yes,” responds Marie, readily accepting the invitation. “He says I don’t half practice my lessons, and it’s no such thing! I practiced a whole half an hour yesterday, and on those wretched scales, too! they’re enough to drive one distracted.” Harry glares at the gate-post as if it were the professor himself, and he is about to express, in strong terms, his poor opinion of professors of music generally, when— “Che! cheree! cheree! te-hee, hee, ha, ha, ha!” laughs Robin Redbreast among the budding branches overhead. What is he cocking his shrewd black eye at the two on the steps below for?—looking for all the world as though he had seen them before now—passing notes to each other in that “horrid old school-room,” when “Old Williams” wasn’t watching. But hush, you, Sir Robin, and hush, every one. Marie lifts her hand to impose silence; for, see, there is a wee gray sparrow prospecting about a moss basket hanging in the porch, evidently in search of a good building site. But here comes the mail-carrier, who cannot stop for such trifles. As he rapidly approaches Mrs. Sparrow flies away. Kate, who has been setting out tulip-bulbs in her flower-beds in the back-yard, comes to look over the letters. This one, from a small boy, she reads aloud: DEER COZEN KATE