occurred to her to mention, apropos of nothing, her opinion of Mrs. Maitland's looks: "I like Blair's mother best; but David's mother is prettier than Blair's mother." "It isn't polite to brag on mothers," said David, surveying his new trousers complacently, "but I know what I think." Blair, jouncing up and down on his branch, agreed with unoffended candor. "'Course she's prettier. Anybody is. Mother's ugly." "It isn't right to say things like that out of the family," Nannie observed. "This _is_ the family. You're going to marry David, and I'm going to marry Elizabeth. And I'm going to be awfully rich; and I'll give all you children a lot of money. Jimmy Sullivan--he's a friend of mine; I got acquainted with him yesterday, and he's the biggest puddler in our Works. Jimmie said, 'You're the only son,' he said, 'you'll get it all.' 'Course I told him I'd give him some," said Blair. At this moment Elizabeth was moved to catch David round the neck, and give him a loud kiss on his left ear. David sighed. "You may kiss me," he said patiently; "but I'd rather you'd tell me when you want to. You knocked off my cap." "Say, David," Nannie said, flinging his cap up to him, "Blair can stand on his head and count five. You can't." At this David's usual admiration for Blair suffered an eclipse; he grew very red, then exploded: "I--I--I've had mumps, and I have two warts, and Blair hasn't. And I have a real dining-room at my house, and Blair hasn't!" Nannie flew to the rescue: "You haven't got a real mother. You are only an adopted." "Well, what are you?" David said, angrily; "you're nothing but a Step." "I haven't got any kind of a mother," Elizabeth said, with complacent melancholy. "Stop fighting," Blair commanded amiably; "David is right; we have a pigsty of a dining-room at our house." He paused to bend over and touch with an ecstatic finger a flake of lichen covering with its serpent green the damp, black bark in the crotch of the old tree. "Isn't that pretty?" he said. "You ought not to say things about our house," Nannie reproved him. As Blair used to say when he grew up, "Nannie was born proper." "Why not?" said Blair. "They know everything is ugly at our house. They've got real dining-rooms at their houses; they don't have old desks round, the way we do."