One side of a nuisance. How truly it was a nuisance, for Mr. Harding did not admire stockades himself. He had seen the inside of one in war times, and he had very nearly lost his life in trying to escape from it. He had an old wound in his leg yet that made him crosser on damp days than in dry weather, and here he was erecting stockades in his old age, to keep people out instead of in. It took all his self-control to keep from being ashamed. Day after day he heard the childish prattle, and the pounding of nails as the building of the playhouse went on, sometimes with wrath, at other times with an almost eager curiosity to see and hear the little flock at their pretty play. One day it rained, and silence reigned in the garden. His wound twinged and prickled all day, and he was in a furious mood toward evening as he went to straighten up some weak-backed plants that the rain had lopped over. A kitten was frisking about in a bed of choice strawberry plants--a saucy, disrespectful kitten which had evidently braved the terrors of the stockade, as he had done himself in the years gone by. He hated cats almost as he hated loud-voiced widows--perhaps he was thinking of the Widow Barlow, and of the joy it would be to take her as he was taking the kitten (loving little creature, it had never felt the touch of hatred, and didn’t know enough to run away), and, with one twist of his avenging arm, sling her over the fence. The kitten went over, legs and tail wildly outstretched, and little Barbara was at the window. “Oh, mamma, he threw my darlin’ kitty right over the fence,” he heard her shriek, sobbingly, as she ran out and picked up her pet. “Kitty, kitty, is you killed?” she cried, breathlessly, as the little creature, stunned for a moment by its fall, closed its eyes and lay limply in her arms as she ran into the house. “Mean old thing. If I was a man, I’d thrash him,” said Horace, doubling his little fists savagely. “No, no, little ones; we must love him into kindness,” Mrs. Manning observed, gently. “He is a poor, lonely old man with no one to coax him into nice ways. See, Kitty isn’t hurt. Give her some milk and she will soon be quite happy again,” and in ministering to the kitten the children forgot their revengeful thoughts: but over the fence an old, cross-grained man went into his finer house with a mean feeling in his heart which even the thought of the Widow Barlow could not change to a comfortable complacency. The rain cleared away and the family were very busy in the garden. The small plat on the south corner, away from the baleful shadow of the fence, was full of the roses and shrubs which the Widow Barlow had planted and tended so carefully, and they were already full of buds. Mrs. Manning was exceedingly fond of flowers, too, and her bay window on the west side was full of choice plants.