were a great help to the Headman.  My terrier was no closer to my heels from morning to night than were these youngsters.  They took to country life like the young animals they were, and made friends with all, from Thompson down.  They must needs watch the sheep as they walked their endless way on the treadmill night and morning; they thrust their hands into hundreds of nests and placed the spoils in Sam’s big baskets; they watched the calves at their patent feeders, which deceived the calves, but not the girls; they climbed into the grain bins and tobogganed on the corn; they haunted the cow-barn at milking time and wondered much; but the chiefest of their delights was the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them.  A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child.  The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both.  It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right in his conclusion that we are all ascended from the ape.  I have seen features and traits of character so distinctly piggish as to rouse my suspicions that the genealogical line is not free from a cross of sus scrofa.  The pig grew in stature and in wisdom, but not in grace, from day to day, until it threatened to dominate the place.  However, it was lost during the absence of its friends,—­to be replaced by a younger one at the next visit.

“Do your pigs get lost when you are away?” asked No. 1.

“Not often, dear.”

“It’s only pet pigs that runds away,” said No. 2, “and I don’t care, for it rooted me.”

The pet pig is still a favorite with the grand-girls, but it always runs away in the fall.

Kate loved to come to Four Oaks, and she spent so much time there that she often said:—­

“We have no right to that $1200; we spend four times as much time here as you all do in town.”

“That’s all right daughter, but I wish you would spend twice as much time here as you do, and I also wish that the $1200 were twice as much as it is.”

Time was running so smoothly with us that we “knocked on wood” each morning for fear our luck would break.

The cottage which had once served as a temporary granary, and which had been moved to the building line two years before, was now turned into an overflow house against the time when Jack should come home for the winter vacation.  Polly had decided to have “just as many as we can hold, and some more,” and as the heaviest duties fell upon her, the rest of us could hardly find fault.  The partitions were torn out of the cottage, and it was opened up into one room, except for the kitchen, which was turned into a bath-room.  Six single iron beds were put up, and the place was made comfortable by an old-fashioned,