In the meantime Madam Robin scolded Uncle George and Marian until they left the tree to watch her from a distance. That robin's nest filled Marian's every thought for days and days. When the baby birds were hatched she was so anxious to see them oftener than Uncle George had time to lift her on his shoulder, she learned to climb the tree. After that Marian was oftener in the apple-trees than under them. Had there been no rainy days and had the summer lasted all the year, Marian would have been a fortunate child. Aunt Amelia called her a tomboy and said no one would ever catch Ella St. Claire climbing trees and running like a wild child across the yard and through the locust grove. The two children admired each other. Had it been possible they would have played together all the time. Marian, who became a sun-browned romp, thought there never was such a dainty creature as her delicate, white-skinned cousin Ella, whose long black curls were never tumbled by the wind or play: and Ella never missed a chance to talk with her laughing, joyous cousin, who could always think of something new. Aunt Amelia said that Ella wasn't the same child when she was left with Marian for half an hour, and she could not allow the children to play together for her little daughter's sake. It was her duty as a mother to guard that little daughter from harmful influences. This was the talk to which Marian listened day after day. It grieved her to the quick. Again and again, especially on rainy days, she promised Aunt Amelia that she would be good, and each time Aunt Amelia sent her to her room to think over the bad things she had done and what an ungrateful child she was. Although Marian became convinced that she was a bad child, she couldn't sit down and think of her sins long at a time, and her penitent spells usually ended in a concert. Uncle George took her to one early in the summer, and ever after, playing concert was one of Marian's favorite games. She had committed "Bingen on the Rhine" to memory from hearing it often read in school at the Home, and on rainy days when sent to her room, she chanted it, wailed it and recited it until poor Ella was unhappy and discontented because she could have no part in the fun. Ella had a toy piano kept as an ornament. Marian's piano was a chair, her stool was a box and her sheet music, an almanac: but in her soul was joy. "What can you do with such a child?" demanded Aunt Amelia. "Let her alone," counseled Uncle George. CHAPTER VI THAT YELLOW CUCUMBER ONE summer day the St. Claires were the guests of a farmer who lived a few miles from town. Ella stayed in the house with her mother and the farmer's wife, but Marian saw the farm; the cows and the sheep and the fields of grain. She asked more questions that day than the hired man ever answered at one time in his life before, and when night came he and Marian were tired.