"Mother, de-ar, can we go out to play in the back yard? I c'n put on my overshoes an' leggins, an' I c'n help Doris too, if you're busy."

Elizabeth looked up from her task of cutting out rompers for her baby with a preoccupied sigh. "You have a little cold now, Carroll," she said doubtfully, "and if you should get wet in the snow——"

"We won't get wet, mother. I pr-romise!"

"Very well, dear; now remember!"

It was cold and clear and there seemed very little danger of dampness as the two children ran out with a whoop of joy into the side yard where the snow-laden evergreens partially screened the Stanford's house from view. Robbie Stanford's round, solemn face was staring at them wistfully from a second-story window as they dashed ecstatically into a snow bank, to emerge white with the sparkling drift.

"Hello, Rob; come on out!" called Carroll.

"I can't," replied Master Stanford, raising the window cautiously.

"Why?"

"Oh, nothin' much; but I guess I'd better stay up here till mother comes home."

"Who said so?"

"That horrid ol' Annie. I was down in the kitchen an' I fired only one clothespin at her, jus' for fun, an' it hit her in the eye; she got mad an' chased me up here an' locked the door."

"Where's your mother?"

"She's gone down town. She said she'd bring me some candy if I was good. Bu' 'f I ain't good she'll take the paddle to me. Say, Carroll!"

"What?"

"Why don't you an' Doris make a skatin' rink?"

"A—what?"

"A skatin' rink. It's great. I know how; I saw a boy makin' one in his back yard. It's awful easy. You just run the hose——"

Master Stanford paused in the course of his exposition to cast a cautious glance behind him. "I guess I'm takin' cold all right," he went on feelingly. "I hope I am. Then maybe I'll have the croup an' be awful sick. I guess they'd all be sorry, then. Say, Carroll, do you see Annie anywheres?"

Carroll reconnoitred cautiously. "She's hangin' up clo'es in the back yard," he informed the young person aloft.

"If I c'd get out of here, I'd show you how to make that skatin' rink. We c'd make it easy, an' have it ready to skate on b' to-morrow."

"We haven't any skates," objected Doris. "B'sides," with a toss of her scarlet hood, "I don't believe you know how to make a skatin' rink."

"I don't know how? Well, I just bet I do!" exclaimed the prisoner dangling his small person far over the window-sill, while Doris screamed an excited protest. "Pooh! I ain't afraid of fallin' out—ain't afraid of nothin'; I'll bet I c'd jump out this window. I guess I'd have to if the house took on fire. Say, if this house should ketch on fire, Carroll, your house would burn up too. I've got some matches in my pocket," he added darkly; "if I should take a notion I c'd burn up everythin' on this block, an' maybe the whole town. I'll bet I c'd do it."

"How do you make a skatin' rink?" inquired Carroll, with an anxious glance at his own cosy home, which suddenly appeared very dear to him in view of a general conflagration.

Master Stanford reflected frowningly. "Is our cellar window open?"

"Nope; it's shut."

"Well, first you'll have to dig out a big square place, an' pile snow all round the edge. I'll get out o' here somehow b' the time you get that done; then we'll run it full of water. 'N after that it'll freeze."

"Where c'd we get the water?" inquired Doris, with an unbelieving sniff. "Mother wouldn't let us get it in the kitchen."

"Out of our hose pipe," said Master Stanford grandly. The Brewsters owned no hose, and this fact was a perpetual source of grievance in summer time. "I'll run her right under the hedge into your yard," continued the proprietor of the hose generously, "an' let her swizzle!"

"Oh—my!" gasped the small Brewsters in excited chorus.

"Well; are you goin' to do it?"

Carroll shook his head. "We promised mother we wouldn't get wet," he observed with an air of superior virtue. "'N we always mind our mother, don't we, Doris?—at least I do. Doris doesn't always. But she's a girl."

Master Stanford cackled with derision. "Aw—you're a terrible good boy, aren't you?" he crowed. "My father says you're a reg'lar prig. He says he'd larrup me, if I was always braggin' 'bout bein' so good the way you do. He says I haven't anythin' to brag of. Course if you're 'fraid of your mother——"

Doris pirouetted off across the yard with a flirt of her short skirts. "We aren't afraid, smarty!" she cried, her pink chin high in air. "An' we aren't any gooder an' you are, Robbie Stanford—at least I'm not; so there! Come on, Carroll; let's make a skatin' rink."

Hard labour with two small snow-shovels produced the semblance of a square enclosure bounded by uneven ridges of soft snow. Mrs. Brewster glancing out of the window at her darlings was pleased to observe their red cheeks and the joyous enthusiasm with which they were pursuing their self-imposed task.

"Dear little souls!" she thought, "how little it takes to keep them happy." Then she became absorbingly busy at her machine in the task of double-stitching the seams of the baby's rompers.

In the meanwhile young Robert Stanford had been released from durance vile by the kind-hearted Annie, whose warm Irish heart had reproached her for her fit of bad temper.

"Sure an' yez didn't mean to hit me eye; did yez, now?" she inquired, as she poked her broad red face into the room.

"Naw; course I didn't," the incarcerated one ingratiatingly assured her. "Say, Annie, c'n I have four cookies?"

"Oh, go 'way wid yez; four's too many entirely; I'll give ye wan wid a clip over yer ear."

"No; honest, I ain't goin' to eat 'em all. I want one for Carroll an' Doris an' two for me."

"An' it's the generous young one he is entirely," laughed Annie. "Come on down an' I'll put yer coat on, and mind yez don't get into no more mischief or I'll be afther tellin' yer mother; thin you'll get a taste of the paddle."

"I'll give you a whole lot of my candy, Annie," said the boy earnestly, "if you'll tell mother I was awful good. Will you?"

"'Awful' it was, all right," giggled Annie; "but if I was to say you was good I'd have to burn in purgatory for me sins. I'll say nothin'."

"Where's purgatory, Annie?" inquired the young person after a thoughtful silence.

"It's a warrum place entirely where you'll find yourself some day, I'm thinkin', if yez meddle too much in my kitchen," said Annie darkly. "Here's your cookies; now g'wan wid yez an' don't ye be afther botherin' me no more."

It was a matter which required concerted effort to uncoil the heavy hose, attach it to the water pipe and lift the nozzle to the level of the window; but it was accomplished at last through the united efforts of the two boys ably assisted by Doris, who was all excitement at the prospect of sliding on a real ice pond in her own yard.

"I guess our daddy'll be s'prised when he sees us goin' around like lightnin' on reg'lar ice," she said. "He's got skates, our daddy has, an' he c'n skate like everythin', our daddy can."

"Pooh! that's nothin'," retorted Master Stanford; "my father c'n beat your father all holler. He's a whole lot taller 'n your father, an' our house is higher 'n yours, too."

"It's p'liter not to brag," said Doris, ignoring her own deflections from civility. "Oh, my, look at the water spurting out of that teeny, weeny hole! It's just like a fountain."

The two boys were laboriously dragging the heavy hose across the yard, and in the process other holes appeared through which the water hissed and gurgled with increasing force.

"I don't care," the proprietor of the hose assured them loftily. "It's an' ol' thing anyway. We're goin' to have a great long new one nex' summer; then maybe we'll give you this one. My father's so rich he don't care. Now I'll poke the nozzle through the hedge an' let her swizzle. Get out o' the way, Doris; I don't care if I do get wet."

Ten minutes later Mrs. Stanford, rosy and cheerful, after her brisk walk in the winter sunshine, appeared on the scene. "What are you doing, kiddies?" she inquired pleasantly; then in a more doubtful tone. "What are you doing? Why, Robbie!"

"We're jus' makin' a skatin' rink, and the ol' hose leaks like thunder," explained her son, employing a simile he had heard his father use the day before, and which he had considered particularly manly and admirable.

"Robert! you are soaked to the skin—and so is Carroll. Go right into the house. What do you mean by being so naughty?"

"You didn't say I couldn't take the hose," sulked the boy, surveying his parent from under lowering brows.

"Go in the house, sir; I'll attend to you presently," said his mother sternly.

"Oh, please; I'll be good! I didn't—mean—to," whined the child. "Carroll an' Doris, they wanted a skatin' rink, an' I——"

Mrs. Stanford stooped to turn off the water. "Go home at once," she said to her neighbour's children. "And you, Robert, go up to the bathroom and take off your wet clothing." Her pretty young face was flushed with anger. "I never saw such dreadful children!" she murmured wrathfully.

"My, but she's mad!" whispered Carroll, looking after the slim, erect figure, "it wasn't our fault their ol' hose leaked."

"I guess our mother'll be some mad, too," said Doris doubtfully; "that water spurted all over my leggins; an' now I guess it's freezing."

The two walked slowly across the yard, ploughing through the rapidly congealing slush, which was the disappointing outcome of two hours of hard work.

"I don't like Robbie Stanford one bit," said Doris disgustedly. "He's always getting us into mischief."

"I said we ought not to get wet," Carroll reminded her eagerly. "Don't you remember I did? An' you said——"

"I don't like you either," pursued the little girl stonily. "I don't b'lieve I like boys a'tall; so there!"

"I'm all wet," she announced to her mother, "an' Carroll's wetter 'an I am; an'—we—we're—both—c-cold!"

It was characteristic of Elizabeth that she thoroughly dried and warmed the children before asking any questions. Then despite their dismayed protests she put them both to bed. "You disobeyed me," she told them, "and now you'll have to stay in your beds till to-morrow morning. I'll explain to your father. Of course he'll be disappointed not to see you at dinner; but I can't help that."

A period of depressing silence followed during which both children caught the distant sounds of passionate and prolonged crying from the neighbouring house.

"It's Robbie," said Carroll in an awed whisper; "his mother's whipping him with that butter-paddle o' hers. She does that when he's awful bad."

"I'd bite her!" murmured Doris between her clenched teeth. "I'd—I'd—scratch her!" She burst into excited tears. "I'd just—hate my mother if she—if she hurt me like that!"

"Pooh! Rob don't care so very much," Carroll assured her; "he says he hollers jus' as loud as he can so his mother'll stop quicker. I s'pose," he continued after a thoughtful pause, "Robbie'll be up to dinner jus' the same, an' we'll be here eatin' bread and milk."

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