The two girls had just arrived at the yam patch, prepared to accomplish wonders, for the end was well in sight. They had been working it now for more than a fortnight, and most of its emerald carpet was rooted up and flung aside. But a few of the furrows were still roofed over with vines, and in one of these covered trenches Laurie was walking with hidden feet, shuffling happily as through autumn leaves. In another minute Gray's "Elegy" was due to descend upon her.

"Laurie, I wouldn't do that," counseled Osceola sharply. "It's far more foolhardy than brave."

"I'm only having a little fun before school," she announced. "Why the word 'brave'? Why the word 'foolhardy'?"

"Snakes," explained Osceola with a brevity that was very expressive.

Needing no further persuasion, Laurie stepped upon a ridge and picked the remainder of her steps.

"Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,"

she declaimed dramatically on reaching the end of the ridge.

She sat down on the ground and dug industrionsly into a hill.

"A youth to fortune and to fame unknown,"

supplemented Osceola, likewise sitting down and getting to work. She quoted with clinging appreciation of every precious word.

"Fair science-frowned not-on his humble birth,"

panted Laurie, tugging hard at a stubborn tuber that finally came from the sand with a hollow "plop!"

"And melancholy marked him for its own,"

ended Osceola, also producing a tuber, a kinked one which she greeted with a dreamy "Looks like a duck.” Presently they took another hill each, and another stanza of Gray's "Elegy." It dug a yam field even more successfully than "Locksley Hall." This last had all been learned a line to a yam, till certain shapes of sweet potatoes, whether cooked or otherwise, suggested nothing to Laurie but

"Oh, my Amy, mine no more!"

In fact a "dish of Amys" already had a reputable place in the McAllister menu vocabulary.

The yam patch with its two pretty laborers made a picture not unworthy the brush of a Millet, its levels stretching pensively into hazy distance, the glossyleaved grove on one side, and on the other the lake shining like a mirror in the sun. Shown up splendidly by these surrounding greens and blues, stack upon stack of rose-colored tubers caught the eye and filled it artistically, despite the fact that the attraction was mere vulgar vegetable. Farther off, nearer the house, were stacks that equally testified to industry but failed to please the eye, nor as yet the imagination, for they were the sacked article for which no provision had been made in regard to carting.

A sweet potato that will walk of itself to a shipping dock has not yet been raised.

And now came Tallahassie and Lee, the former on a run, the latter with a sleepwalker's lethargy. Rac

ing entertainedly between the little girl's bare heels was Jax; his black-and-white spots looked particularly artificial in a good light, making him resemble no known dog but the Noah's ark kind.

"I'm trainin' him to be my kerridge-pup!" yelled Tallahassie, romping happily into earshot. "Learnin' him to do what I tell him. Looker here-charge!"

Refusing to take this command as a canine quietus, but rather as instructions to a light brigade, Jax immediately raced headlong to the house to cheer up Little Eva. Having fallen in love with the idiot kitten at first sight his constant delight thereafter was to pay her attentions. Wherever she hid he would nose her out with fur-raising result. Blear-eyed but dignified she would try to glare him down, whereat he would lift a paw and bark the burlesque threat "Die!" At this she would invariably collapse over backward with hisses and spits. Then Jax would gallop industriously around the whole house in order to give Little Eva time to right herself in readiness for the next performance.

66

"He ain't all of him trained yet," admitted Tallahassie, gazing after him darkly. Then she turned to the more congenial occupation of regaling the two workers with an account of the sights she had seen en route. Tallahassie could extract more from a woods trail than many a one from an African hunt. "An' that there slick Englishman isn't far away, shootin' quail,” she ended. "He calls 'em pa'tridge, but no matter what he calls 'em he gets 'em. His gun is the comical-ist ever, an' don' make no noise when it goes. off. He acted real handsome to me, and showed me how it worked. He held it out to me so's I could read the name," she went on, flushing sensitively. “I was

'shamed to say I couldn't read, so I glued my eyes to the place a toler❜ble time to throw him off the track. I hope I done it, for I'd like him to think some of me. He's mighty nice, an' his hair bags out wavy.”

During this latter recital Laurie's eyes were sympathetically upon the victim of the "big lazies," for, robbed by it of all his boy heritage, able only to chew his nails and mope, he had not evinced the faintest interest in guns or quail, leaving all such manliness to his vivacious little sister. Lee was growing thinner of frame and paunchier of abdomen, and his unwholesome flesh was as pasty-hued as cold boiled macaroni. He finally shifted uneasily under the sympathetic gaze, evidently seeing need to escape.

"I raikon I go find out if how them trout is a-bitin"," he furtively remarked, as he slouched towards the dilapidated dock.

It still crawled out into the lake on its hundred rotten legs, with centipede twists in it-a useless but charmingly picturesque landscape effect. Upon it Lee would huddle for hours at a time, holding drowsily to a line and betraying real vexation when a "trout”. which was the generic name for anything with finshooked itself and had to be hauled in.

Tallahassie began piling yams in the wheel-barrow in order to trot them to the cleansing surf. The piling had to be performed more or less tenderly, for a Florida yam has a particularly sensitive temperament and goes into an unmarketable state of mushy melancholy if thoughtlessly thumped.

"You start up you' po'try, you two," ordered the little girl of the older ones. "I've took quite a shine to that there Gray Sellegy, an' I've learned myself the first reel-off. I'll tell it to you."

This she proceeded to do. Her idea of "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day" turned out to be:

"The coffee tells the smell of parting day,
The flowing her swines lowly o'er the lea:
The homeman plodward ploughs his weary way
And leaves the swirl to darkies and to me.'

"Why, my goodness gracious," commented the astonished Laurie.

"What can you do with a dunce like that?" asked Osceola, reddening with annoyance.

"Teach her," answered Laurie promptly. She thereupon explained the verse, though without bringing conspicuous relief to the misquoter. For a truth Tallahassie looked rather robbed.

"It plum spiles the hull thing," she complained, in highly aggrieved tones. "Afore I could mos' taste that coffee bilin', an' see somebody's pap comin' home with a plough, an' hear the darkies singin'. It was a right smart of a pretty pickcher-even to the razorback hawgs a-rootin'."

"As I said before, what can you do with a dunce like that?" asked Osceola, the angry humiliation deepening in her brown eyes. She flashed a somber glance from Tallahassie to the distant hump that was Lee-an obvious disowning of both.

"And as I said before, teach her," insisted Laurie.

"Osceoly hain't got time for nothin' excep' to prettyup an' watch for Cal Tandy," grinned Tallahassie, catching up the wheelbarrow handles with a capable jerk. "I see him once in whiles, an' he tells me she'd be doin' better to darn my stockin's 'stead of lettin' me git sandspurs in my toes, goin' bare-laigged." She wheeled the load on its way, calling back over her