"But I guess if the truth were known," Addison continued sapiently, "that no oldish people like to be called grandpa and grandma very well, till they get to be as much as eighty years old. Then they seem to enjoy it." Grandmother provided but two meals on Sunday: breakfast at about eight in the morning, and dinner at three in the afternoon. Consequently we were sitting down to dinner, with very good appetites, judging the others by my own, when one seat was seen to be vacant. "Where's Halstead?" the Old Squire asked. There was an expectant hush; and again I saw Theodora and Addison glance across to each other. As no one seemed to know, nothing further was said. We were half through dinner, when the absent one came quickly into the kitchen, looking very red and much heated. With a stealthy glance through the open door into the dining-room, he hastily bathed his face in cold water, then came in and took his place. His hair was wet, his collar limp, and altogether he looked like a boy fresh from a hot run. "Where have you been, Halstead?" the Old Squire inquired. "Up in the sheep pasture, sir," said Halstead promptly. "I can't make but forty-seven lambs, the way I count. There is one gone." "A very sudden liking for shepherd life," remarked Addison in an undertone to Theodora. "What made you run and heat yourself so?" Gram asked him. "I was afraid I should be late to dinner," answered Halstead with a bold look, intended for a frank one. Grandfather looked at him earnestly; but nothing more was said. We all felt uneasy. Dinner ended rather drearily. In the evening Theodora read to us several chapters from _Dred_, Mrs. Stowe's novel. Anti-slavery books were then well nigh sacred at the old farm. Almost any other work of fiction would hardly have been considered fit reading for Sunday. CHAPTER III MONDAY AT THE OLD FARM "I shall expect you to work with us on the farm, 'Edmund,'" grandfather said to me after breakfast. "But you may have this forenoon, to look about and see the place. Enjoy yourself all you can." The robins were singing blithely in the orchard. I went thither and I think it was four robins' nests which I found in as many different apple trees, one with three, two with four and one with five blue eggs. Is there anything prettier than the eggs of a robin, in the eyes of a boy? As I climbed the orchard wall to cross the road, a milk snake was sunning on the loose stones among the raspberry bushes, the first I had ever seen; and I bear witness that the ancestral antipathy to the serpent leaped within me instantly. I beat his head without remorse, ay, pounded his tail, too, which wriggled prodigiously, and chopped his body to pieces with sharp stones.