"Ours aren't ripe yet," she answered, as she scrambled down from the fence. "When they are, I'll bring some of them over, if you want them. Yours aren't very good ones, either." Isabel also descended from the fence. As she did so, her skirt clung for a moment, and the turnip rolled out from her pocket. Mr. Rogers eyed her sternly. "Worse and worse," he said. "I would rather feel that you ate them here, where temptation lurks, than that you carried them away to devour at your ease. I shall surely have to speak to your parents, little girls. Who are you?" Isabel looked to Phebe for support; but Phebe was far down the road, running to meet her brother, who had just come in sight, with Mulvaney, the old Irish setter, at his heels. "I--I'm Isabel St. John," she confessed. "Not the minister's girl?" She nodded. "Well, I swan!" And Mr. Rogers picked up his hoe, and fell to pondering upon the problem of infant depravity, while Isabel turned and scuttled after her friend. "What do you want, Hu?" Phebe was calling. "Hope says it's time for you to come home now, and get dressed." "Bother! I don't want to. Isabel and I are having fun." Hubert took her hand and turned it palm upward. "It must be a queer kind of fun, from the color of you," he observed. "But come, Babe, Hope is waiting." Isabel had joined them and fallen into step at their side. "What a queer name Hope is!" she said critically, for she wished to convince Phebe that she and all her family were under the ban of her lasting displeasure. "It is only short for Hopestill, and it isn't any queerer name than Isabel." "Hopestill! That's worse. Where did she ever get such a name?" But Hubert interposed. "It was mamma's name, Isabel; so we all like it. Let's not talk about it any more." Towards noon of that day, Theodora, who had taken refuge in her tree, heard Hope's voice calling her. Reluctantly she scrambled down from her perch and presented herself. "There's so much to be done, Teddy," Hope said; "would you mind dusting the parlor?" Theodora hated dusting. Her idea of that solemn household rite was to stand in the middle of the room and flap a feather duster in all directions. To-day, however, she took the cloth which Hope offered, without pausing to argue over the need for its use.