The pepper-tree in the backyard nodded its long, sweeping branches as if it were inviting the little white burro to come and stand in its shade.

The burro was coming, with Jimmy-boy on his back and the dog Punch at his heels.

“Selim is always glad to get home,” said John, the coachman, as he helped Jimmy-boy down, and fastened the burro to the pepper-tree.

“Yes; he likes to switch flies,” said Jimmy, patting Selim on the shoulder.

Jimmy was a fine, straight boy, with frank brown eyes and a pleasant smile. People called him “a noble little fellow;” and so he was on the whole, but he admired himself rather too much. It was hard for him to own that Jimmy Sanford Dunlee ever did anything wrong. You will see this for yourself as we go on with our story.

Jimmy-boy and Punch ran along to the garden at the left of the house. Here was a little pond with a stone wall around it. It had been made there just to look pretty; and water went into it from a long pipe that lay under the ground.

Jimmy paused to converse with a horned toad sitting half hidden under a black calla. There were three or four horned toads near the pond, all brought there by Jimmy-boy; but this was the youngest, and his especial pet. Jimmy had more than once saved the gentle creature from being pounced upon by Judy, the cat.

“I won’t let Judy get you if I can help it, Jacky Horner. But if she comes, you must hook her with your little horns, Jacky. Now mind what I say!”

Jacky’s black eyes glistened like two round beads. He did not try to run away or hide; for he had learned that this small boy who fed flies to him was his friend.

As Jimmy went toward the front veranda, he heard a pleasant child-voice singing from somewhere up in the air,—

“My bonnie sweet Jamie is all my joy.”

The voice was wee Lucy’s, and she was singing a Scotch song which had been taught her by her sister Kyzie. But where was Lucy? Jimmy looked up to the tower windows, but could see nothing of her.

“Where are you, Lucy?”

“Up here,” she answered.

“Up where?”

“Up in the sky.”

He looked again, and beheld his little sister sitting high on the limb of a tall cypress-tree. How had she got there? Jimmy was startled; for it was all of a quarter of a minute before he saw Mr. Henry Sanford, who had hidden, laughing, behind the tree. The young man had raised Lucy to her lofty seat, and was now standing guard over her.

“You never knew your little sister had wings, did you, Jimmy-boy?” said he.

“I’ll have ’em when I go up to heaven,” cried Lucy, “and I’ll fly this way!” spreading out her little skirts, and waving her arms above her head.

It was well that Mr. Sanford was there to catch her before she fell.

“There! I wanted to get down awf’ly!” she cried, as she landed on the grass. “I fink that pie is done.”

“The Washington-pie,” explained Jimmy to Mr. Sanford. “It’s just a cake with jelly in. I don’t know why folks call it a pie. Vendla is making it for George Washington; it’s his birthday to-morrow.”

“Aren’t you a little mistaken there, Jimmy? To-morrow will be Fourth of July, not Washington’s Birthday.”

“Oh, wasn’t he born to-morrow? I thought papa said so,” said Jimmy, slowly following Lucy, who had gone in search of the pie.

She had already bounded in at the back door, and, finding no one in the kitchen, had danced along to the pantry. There it was on the shelf by the window. Not a pie,—a lovely, plump brown cake. Some people were coming visiting to-morrow, perhaps a good many people, and Washington with them. That was the reason the cake was so very large, Lucy thought.

Was it cooling properly? The child hopped about, making little exclamations, and thinking Washington would like his cake, it was so large and brown, and so slippery smooth.

“Tastes like choc-lid drops, I s’pose. No; like candy-mels. Wish I knew how it does taste.” She gazed and gazed. “Would mamma care if I should touch it with my finger,—so,—my littlest finger, just to see ’f it’s hard? I wouldn’t hurt it any! Why, it’s just as soft!”

Delightful discovery! And, being soft, a scrap of it adhered to that littlest finger. Only a tiny scrap. And pray, what could Lucy do but put it in her mouth?

“’Tis like choc-lid drops. No; I don’t know—maybe it’s like candy-mels. Can’t tell ’thout I have a bigger piece.”

The first hole had been no deeper than the dimple in Lucy’s cheek; the next hole went farther in. She was ready for the third nibble when her brother entered the pantry.

“Lucy Lyman Dunlee!” he exclaimed; “that’s a Fourth o’ July Washington-pie! Made for company! Now you’ll catch it!”

“I wasn’t hurting Wash’ton’s Fourthy July pie; ’course I wasn’t,” returned the little mischief very innocently.

“I never saw such a girl. You’re as bad as the captain’s monkey,” said Jimmy severely. But he was not looking at Lucy; he was looking at the pie. “Go right away and let it alone! I suppose you don’t mean to go, though. Why, how you have dented it up!” Here Jimmy seized a knife, and made a neat little dash at the frosting. “There, that doesn’t leave any mark.”

A large bit was left on the knife, a much larger one than Lucy had been able to secure. She opened her mouth expectantly; but, strange to say, the dainty morsel went straight into Jimmy’s own mouth, not hers!

“Hello! that’s good,” said he. “I don’t like frosting after it’s all dried up.”

“Nor me, either! Give me some!” pleaded the little sister.

“There, take that; I’m only smoothing it off. You were a naughty girl to touch it in the first place. Maybe when you get as old as I am you’ll have some sense. You see,” he added, as he went on making repairs, “I have to smooth it off, or mamma’ll know what you’ve done, and you’ll get a snipping.”

It was very interesting business “smoothing it off;” it gave the children so many chances to find out just how the frosting tasted.

But alas! Jimmy’s knife made worse havoc than Lucy’s finger had done. Though he tried his best, it would leave deep tracks like a wagon-wheel in the mud. Or you might have fancied a dozen mischievous brownies had been driving over that beautiful cake pell-mell on their bicycles.

Jimmy, amazed and alarmed, gave it up at last.

“No use,” said he. “For shame, Lucy Dunlee!” and hid the “Fourth o’ July Washington-pie” behind a pan, there to dry in all its ugly roughness.

Vendla descried it that afternoon, and showed it to her mistress. Vendla was the new girl, a Swede, who had come after Molly was married.

Mrs. Dunlee summoned Jimmy-boy into the pantry, and pointed out to him something which looked like a huge mud-ball baked in the sun. It was the ruins of the Washington-pie. Jimmy was deeply mortified, but tried to defend himself.

“’Twas Lucy began it, mamma. True’s the world, ’twas Lucy! Boys don’t do such things. She pitched right in and spoiled it, or I wouldn’t ever ’a’ touched it.”

“James!” said his mother sternly.

“I only tried to smooth it off, mamma, so folks wouldn’t know folks had touched it. If Lucy”—

“So because Lucy had picked off some of the frosting, you must meddle with it too. And now you throw all the blame on your little sister! How shabby of you! Isn’t my boy any more manly than this?”

Jimmy hung his head. It was dreadful not to be a manly boy. He scowled at the cracks in the floor, and thoroughly despised himself.

“I don’t see,” moaned he, laying his hand with a gesture of despair on his chest, “I don’t see how such mean things get into my”—he paused, unable to think of the right word—“into my—stomach.”

He meant his heart.

“I’m older’n Lucy is, and I’m a boy. She’s only a girl! I think I was mean, awful mean, mamma!”

It was a great thing for Jimmy to own this.

“Well said, my son! I like that. But you know you are apt to forget. You forgot twice last week to be manly toward Lucy. Is there any way to make you remember?”

Jimmy’s hand, which had been pressed upon his heart, dropped suddenly. He hoped his mother would not think it necessary to punish him very much.

“If—if you don’t let me eat any of that Fourth o’ July Washington-pie, mamma”—

“Certainly I shall forbid the pie at any rate, because you meddled with it. But now for being a coward, and saying, ‘’Twas Lucy;’ what ought we to do about that?”

“O mamma, mamma!” cried Jimmy in alarm, “you wouldn’t take away my fire-crackers and pin-wheels and things?—you wouldn’t do it, mamma?”

“My precious boy! I couldn’t bear to deprive you of the beautiful rockets and Roman candles which Mr. Sanford and your papa have given you for the Fourth! There must be some easier punishment; let us think.”

Jimmy looked relieved.

“Didn’t Aunt Vi give you some money to spend for candy?”

“Yes, mamma; two bits,” (twenty-five cents). “But I want it! Gilly Irwin is coming in the morning to go to the candy stores with me. O mamma, please!”

“But, my dear, if I should pass by your faults you would forget them, and then you wouldn’t improve. I really think you ought to go without your Fourth of July candy.”

“Oh—Oh—Oh!”

“I shall not take away the money, however. You may simply drop it in your bank.”

Jimmy twisted his neck and twirled his fingers, but said not a word.

Two people in this world were always right, he thought,—mamma and papa. Always right, and never changed their minds; so it wasn’t of the slightest use to tease.

But Fourth of July, and not a speck of candy! Oh, dear!