breeding beds for these pests, and it will pay any landowner to suppress them. CHAPTER XLV DOGS AND HORSES It was definitely decided in August that Jane was not to go back to Farmington. We had all been of two minds over this question, and it was a comfort to have it settled, though I always suspect that my share of it was not beyond the suspicion of selfishness. Jane was just past nineteen. She had a fair education, so far as books go, and she did not wish to graduate simply for the honor of a diploma. Indeed, there were many studies between her and the diploma which she loathed. She could never understand how a girl of healthy mind could care for mathematics, exact science, or dead languages. English and French were enough for her tongue, and history, literature, and metaphysics enough for her mind. "I can learn much more from the books in your library and from the dogs and horses than I can at school, besides being a thousand times happier; and oh, Dad, if you will let me have a forge and workshop, I will make no end of things." This was a new idea to me, and I looked into it with some interest. I knew that Jane was deft with her fingers, but I did not know that she had a special wish to cultivate this deftness or to put it to practical use. "What can you do with a forge?" said I. "You can't shoe the horses or sharpen the ploughs. Can you make nails? They are machine-made now, and you couldn't earn ten cents a week, even at horse-shoe nails." "I don't want to make nails, Dad; I want to work in copper and brass, and iron, too, but in girl fashion. Mary Town has a forge in Hartford, and I spent lots of Saturdays with her. She says that I am cleverer than she is, but of course she was jollying me, for she makes beautiful things; but I can learn, and it's great fun." "What kind of things does this young lady make, dear?" "Lamp-shades, paper-knives, hinges, bag-tops, buckles, and lots of things. She could sell them, too, if she had to. It's like learning a trade, Dad." "All right, child, you shall have a forge, if you will agree not to burn yourself up. Do you roll up your sleeves and wear a leather apron?" "Why, of course, just like a blacksmith; only mine will be of soft brown leather and pinked at the edges." So Jane was to have her forge. We selected a site for it at once in the grove to the east of the house and about 150 yards away, and set the carpenter at work. The shop proved to be a feature of the place, and soon became a favorite resort for old and young for five o'clock teas and small gossiping parties. The house was a shingled cottage, sixteen by thirty-two, divided into two rooms. The first room, sixteen by twenty, was the company room, but it contained a work bench as well as the dainty trappings of a girl's lounging room. In the centre of the wall that separated the rooms was a huge brick chimney, with a fireplace in the front room and a forge bed in the rear room, which was the forge proper.