THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
313 
and hands clean, and not go fishing alone in the big 
pond. 
It was a long way up to Uncle Ned’s. We didn’t get 
there till it was most dark. Mr. Brown lives the next 
place to his—both of them are big white bouses, with 
lots of trees in front. 
Aunt Phillura is Aunt Susan’s sister—she lives there 
now all the time, and helps Aunt Susan. I wish she 
wasn’t there, though. I knew as well as I wanted to, 
when I first seen her, that she didn’t like boys. She’s 
cross-eyed, and I can’t really tell which one of her eyes 
is looking at me; then she is always asldng Aunt 
Susan why she don’t make Roger do this, and why she 
don’t make him do that? She’s got a little mite of a 
pug away up at the back of her head, and a big wart on 
her nose. I told Silas—he’s Uncle Ned’s hired man—I 
told him that I didn’t like Aunt Phillura; and he said, 
“That’s’cause she’s an old maid.” I said, “What’s 
that? Is it a woman that’s been made along time?” and 
he laughed, and said he “ guessed it was.” 
The other day, I rode old Whiteface to the brook to 
drink, and coming home I asked Silas to let me drive 
all alone, and he said I might a little way, while he put 
the bars up; so he let go, and then old Whiteface tried 
to eat grass, and that frightened me. I held on to bis 
mane as tight as I could, but when he was bending 
down to eat the grass, off I slipped, right over his head, 
and went into a big thistle all full of prickles, and that 
same day I tore my pants on a brier bush. That night 
when Aunt Susan was mending them, Aunt Phillura 
said, “Well, I guess you’ll have enough of that boy, if 
he stays two weeks longer.” Aimt Susan only laughed 
and said “she wished she had a boy of her own.” She’s 
real pretty. I guess she hasn’t been made as long as 
Aunt Phillura has. She laughs at Uncle Ned—he’s real 
funny—but Aunt Phillura doesn’t laugh very often, 
and when she does, he acts as if she hated too, awfully, 
—most as if she was real mad ’cause she had to. 
Afternoons she knits stockings, and sometimes she 
gets asleep in the red chair under the piazza. One day 
she dropped her knitting while she was asleep, and 
Spot, the kitten, got it, and tossed and tumbled it away 
out on the grass, and the needles got out. and I tried to 
get it away from her, and she pulled, and I pulled, and 
it was tangled in the Rose-bushes, and in a little while 
it got all pulled out, so there wasn’t any heel, or any 
toe, or anything left of it, only a lot of blue yarn all 
twisted round Aunt Susan’s Rose-bush. Pretty soon 
she waked up and looked for her knitting,—and I ran 
and hid behind the fence. Then she saw the kitty and 
the yarn, and she jumped up and went after her, and 
said, “Good gracious,” and “Sakes alive,” and began 
talking to herself, and she said she “ wished there 
wasn’t a cat in the whole world,” then she saw me, and 
she said, “nor a boy nuther.” 
She has been real cross at me ever since I brought in 
the pig. You see, Ned said, when I first came, that I 
might have one of the little pigs—he’s got ten of ’em— 
and I said, “Which one?” and he said, “The smallest 
one would do for me,” and he s&id if I’d make it grow 
as large as the rest, I might take it home with me when 
I went, and I thought that would be good, ’cause you 
see I could sell him, and get some money to buy fire¬ 
crackers and candy and pea-nuts. Uncle Ned talks 
real funny. I don’t suppose he thought I’d really want 
it, or catch it, and carry it up to my room, but I did. 
.1 sleep in a little bed-room at the top of the stairs, next 
to Aunt Phillura’s room. It’s a nice little room—Aunt 
Susan let’s me go up there with my books and toys 
whenever I want to. 
Well, I had heard folks say that a pig wouldn’t squeal 
a mite, but keep real still, if you put him in a bag to 
carry him anywhere, so I looked a long time for a bag. 
At last I found the green bag that Silas keeps his fiddle 
in sometimes. I thought that would do, so I got 
Sammy Piper to help me. There was a little place in 
the pen where the pigs could get out, and run in the 
grass to play, so we caught the littlest one, that Uncle 
Ned said I could have, and when Aunt Susan and all 
the rest were in the parlor with some company, I went 
up-stairs and put him in my room and shut the door. 
I thought I could get him fat quicker, so I could give 
him bread and milk every meal-time, and some of my 
lunch, and soon get him as large as the others. I gave 
him my coat to sleep on, then I went down to get a pan 
of nice, rich mud for him to play in. 
I’d got things all fixed up nice for him, but I didn’t 
say anything to anybody about it, because I want¬ 
ed to surprise ’em, and I guess I did; for Aunt 
Phillura heard a noise there, and she went to see 
“what under the canopy was the matter;” and just 
as she opened the door at the head of the stairs, 
out jumped the pig. He upset her, and went tumb¬ 
ling down the stairs. She screamed, and all the 
folks came running out of the parlor to see what was 
the matter, and they tumbled over the pig—that is, 
some of them did; and Aunt Susan said I couldn’t keep 
the pig up in my room any rt'ore; but she laughed, and 
so did Uncle Ned, and he said “I couldn’t use his house 
for a pig-pen.” Silas caught the pig and put him back 
with his mother again, and I guess he was glad to get 
there. 
When he upset Aunt Phillura, she sat right down on 
her best gold-bowed spectacles and spoilt them, and 
she hasn’t liked me very well ever since. She keeps one 
or the other of her eyes on me aU the time, and says to 
Aunt Susan, “Good land, shan’t I be glad when that 
boy goes home 1 ” 
Some time I’ll tell you about my fire-works. 
May Mackenzie. 
The years write their record on human hearts as 
they do on trees, in hidden, inner circles of growth 
which no eye can see .—Saxe Holm. 
Music and flowers are evangels of purity and faith, 
redolent of God, if we but unlock our hearts to their 
ministry. 
To judge religion we must have it—not stare at it 
from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.— 
George Macdonald. 
The cheerful heart, like the kaleidoscope, causes most 
discordant materials to arrange themselves into harmppy 
and beauty. 
