CHAPTER I.

The letter.

Katie Clifford sat on the floor, in the sun, feeding her white mice.  She had a tea-spoon and a cup of bread and milk in her hands.  If she had been their own mother she could not have smiled down on the little creatures more sweetly.

“‘Cause I spect they’s hungry, and that’s why I’m goin’ to give ’em sumpin’ to eat.  Shut your moufs and open your eyes,” said she, waving the tea-spoon, and spattering the bread and milk over their backs.

“Quee, quee,” squeaked the little mice, very well pleased when a drop happened to go into their mouths.

“What are you doing there, Miss Topknot,” said Horace:  “O, I see; catching rats.”

Flyaway frowned fearfully, and the tuft of hair atop of her head danced like a war-plume.

“I shouldn’t think folks would call ’em names, Hollis, when they never did a thing to you.  Nothing but clean white mouses!”

“Let’s see; now I look at ’em, Topknot, they are white.  And what’s all this paper?”

“Bed-kilts.”

“In-deed?”

“You knew it by-fore!”

“One, two, three; I thought the doctor gave you five.  Where are they gone?”

“Well, there hasn’t but two died; the rest’ll live,” said Fly, swinging one of them around by its tail, as if it had been a tame cherry.

Just then Grace came and stood in the parlor doorway.

“O, fie!” said she; “what work!  Ma doesn’t allow that cage in the parlor.  You just carry it out, Fly Clifford.”

Miss Thistledown Flyaway looked up at her sister shyly, out of the corners of her eyes.  Grace was now a beautiful young lady of sixteen, and almost as tall as her mother.  Flyaway adored her, but there was a growing doubt in her mind whether sister Grace had a right to use the tone of command.

“’Cause I spect she isn’t my mamma.”

“Why, Fly, you haven’t started yet!”

“I didn’t think ’twas best,” responded the child, sulkily, fixing her eyes on the mice, who were dancing whirligigs round the wheel.

“Come here to your best friend, little Topknot,” said Horace.  “Let’s take that cage into the green-house, and ask papa to keep it there, because the mice look like water-lilies on long stems.”

Flyaway brightened at once.  She knew water-lilies were lovely.  Giving Grace a triumphant glance, she danced across the room, and put the cage in Horace’s hands, with a smile of trusting love that thrilled his heart.

“Hollis laughs at my mouses, but he don’t say, ’Put ’em away,’ and, ’Put ’em away;’ he says, ’Little gee-urls wants to see things as much as anybody else,’” thought she, gratefully.

“Horace,” said Grace, with a curling lip, “that child is growing up just like you—­fond of worms, and bugs, and all such disgusting things.”

Horace smiled.  No matter for the scorn in Grace’s tone; it pleased him to be compared in any way with his precious little Flyaway.