"It seems to me we are getting into charities without any effort on our part," observed Rob. "We live our uneventful, commonplace lives, and a sort of warm gulf stream of the milk of human kindness is at once penetrating us and bearing us away upon its bosom." "Dear me, Rob, what oratory!" laughed her mother. "Literary style, gained from composing my stories and telling them to the children," explained Rob. "Poor little ones!" commented Cousin Peace mischievously. "Well, it really is queer," persisted Rob. "Hester began it with her vague aspirations, like the little St. Theresa going out to see if she couldn't find some obliging person to martyr her, and then we began to find we could help one or two little miserables so easily that there was no escaping doing it, and now comes Mr. Armstrong, following Mr. Silsby and Dr. Fairbairn's interest in the project, and Aunt Azraella crowns it all. Truly, I knew some people had greatness thrust upon them, but I never knew any one had goodness thrust upon them--I always thought one had to achieve sanctity painfully! Yet, here we are getting made benefactors and saints in spite of ourselves!" "Don't worry, Rob; it takes more than one home for destitute children, and more than a little kindly feeling to make a saint," said her mother. Just then Polly turned the handle of the door and looked in timidly. "Please will it bother you if I tell you that Lydia said she should like to have Rob come out in the kitchen? Because Ben Bolt has a man treed, she says, in the orchard," said Polly, without showing any curiosity as to why she had been dismissed. "A man in the orchard!" cried Rob, springing to her feet, and rushing out after Polly, followed in turn by Wythie, while Mrs. Grey and Miss Charlotte folded up their work to come after them. Rob almost ran into Lydia in the kitchen door-way, and encountered her reproachful gaze. "That goat," said Lydia severely, "has got a man penned up behind an apple-tree. He's a real nice looking man, and he was coming here through the orchard, short cutting from the back street. I guess he thinks it's not a very Christian way of receiving a person." "I don't see why he should look for Christian ways in a goat," laughed Rob. "Poor old Ben Bolt! He knows we have no dog, and Kiku-san can't guard us, so who else is there but him to keep off intruders? I'll go out and rescue this one, however." Rob pulled on her old rubbers, kept convenient in the kitchen, and went out to save the person skulking behind the tree, while old grey Ben Bolt, the family friend whom Prue had rescued from the hands of his enemies, years ago when he was a kid, stood with lowered horns, holding at bay the stranger whom he evidently regarded as a menace to the estate. Rob ran up and seized Ben's horns. "He really is not dangerous," she explained, struggling with her desire to laugh at the same time that she struggled with Ben Bolt. "He acts dangerous, but he is a lamb."