Miss Billy

"Grass, is it, she'd be afther loikin' to see, whin she gits up?" said Mr. Hennesy. "Sure an' we're ploughin' good sod undher iv'ry day av our lives,--loads av it. John Thomas,...

"They held a council, standing Before the river gate. Short time was there, ye well may guess For musing or debate. Out spake the council roundly 'The bridge must straight go do...

"SCHOOL commences Monday," groaned Theodore dismally, from his favourite position on the couch. "How I am to modulate my tones to Virgil's verse after shouting at Mr. Hennesy's...

"But the children will be so disappointed. They will have their reports all ready, and there will be almost no one here to hear them. Neither mother nor father can be present. A...

"I'M going to have a party to-night," announced Theodore, coming into the study on a morning in late October. Mrs. Lee and the two girls looked up from their work in astonishmen...

"BROWN'S sodas are the best in town, if they do come high,--and the girls know it," Miss Billy had jeered a few weeks before. Theodore repeated the words now with a wholly sober...

Beatrice looked up calmly from her mother's chair. Mr. and Mrs. Lee were spending the day away from home, and the elder daughter responded to the question with a little air of a...

"CHERRY STREET will be ablaze with light and aglow with colour," Theodore had mocked some months before. "Number 12 will be filled with diamond tiaras, and cut glass pianos, and...

MRS. CANARY was, literally speaking, behind the times. The weekly edition of that romantic sheet, the _Household Times_, had just arrived, and the mistress of the house had been...

"I'm not ready, and don't expect to be," said Miss Billy crossly, giving the lace a pull and breaking it again. "There now, it can never be tied. I shan't go to school at all th...

AT the same hour the Hennesy family were having six o'clock dinner in the kitchen. Mrs. Hennesy, Marie Jean and John Thomas were already seated at the table, but Mr. Hennesy sti...

The two girls were seated side by side on the floor in Margaret's room, which bore a startling resemblance to a fancy bazaar. The bed was filled with airy masses of silk and gau...

"A miss wouldn't be as good as a mile then, would it? Good-bye, again. Yes, mother, I _have_ a handkerchief. Also a corkscrew for the olives. Also my rubbers. Good-bye, everybody."

THE minister's study was furnished with an eye to comfort rather than beauty. And yet there was something better than mere artistic loveliness in the long room, lined with book...

"A girl who has so many wilful ways She would have caused Job's patience to forsake him, Yet is so rich in all that's girlhood's praise, Did Job himself upon her goodness gaze,...

"I was on me way there, now," said Mrs. Hennesy,--"but I guess I'll not go in, afther hearing how she is. Folks around a sick house is only a clutter."

IT was hot, very hot, in Cherry Street. Miss Billy's garden bloomed as Paradise, but up and down the alley household garbage bubbled and boiled in the sun. The sweet peas on the...

"Prepare to clap your hands and chortle with joy! In six weeks and two days more I shall be at home with you! Perhaps I am a trifle conceited to think that you will be as deligh...

"Witch-grass and nettle and rag-weed grope,-- Paupers that eat the earth's riches out,-- Nightshade and henbane are lurking about, Like demons that enter in When a soul has run...

IT was Saturday morning and a great hammering was going on in the Hennesy yard. Whenever the hammering ceased for a moment, a boyish whistle took its place. It was a cheerful wh...

"DO you know, Ted," said Miss Billy, as they took their way to school together one morning in late September, "this air makes me feel like cutting civilisation entirely and taki...

"The house looked wretched and woe-begone: Its desolate windows wept With a dew that forever dripped and crept From the moss-grown eaves: and ever anon Some idle wind, with a pa...

"Now she's cast off her bonny shoon Made o' gilded leather, And she's put on her Hieland brogues To skip amang the heather: And she's cast off her bonny goon Made o' the silk an...