glistened in the sunlight. Curly's hair had never grown long again since the night of the fire, nearly two years ago, though it was not kept quite as short as the young gentleman himself would have preferred, but was allowed to wave round his head in a floating crop of tangled curls, so that he looked like a veritable little cherub; though Phyl still stuck to her original name of the "little viking."

"I think he's a nice baby, Phyl," said Curly, meditatively, “but I should admire him more if he would not be always screwing up his face like that."

"Well, it might be more becoming if he did not,' admitted the mother; "but it's a way babies have at that age, I believe."

"They are always hideous little monsters," concluded Tor, as he came in and lifted the child high in his arms, whilst it crowed aloud in delight.

"If you think it's a hideous little monster, I wonder you cared to buy it," remarked Curly, setting himself to the serious business of tea, and looking at Tor over the edge of his cup with an air of surprise.

"Well, perhaps it was rather a mistake," answered Tor, setting down the child on Phyl's lap and taking his own cup, "but I have a kind of foolish weakness for the little beggar, now he has come. Don't you think he's shamefully backward, Curly? Why, I expected he'd be walking and talking by this time.”

"Well, then, I don't think you know much about

that kind of animal," said Curly; "I know a great deal more than you do. He won't walk till he's about a year old, and then he'll begin to try and talk if he's pretty forward; but some of them don't speak a bit plain till they get to be pretty nearly two. I think myself it's a mistake to get them so young. I should have bought one bigger to start with."

"Well, when you get to be a man, you might set up a baby-farm of your own, and keep the neighbourhood supplied to order," answered Tor; "I don't think there is such a thing just round here, or we might have done better. But since you know so much about the species, you might make it a very profitable concern. When you do, we'll think about giving you our custom, eh, Phyl? ́

But Phyl only said, "Silly boy!" and then Tor laughed; but Curly sat still drinking his tea and turning the new idea over in his mind. He didn't think it at all a silly one; it might be a very "good speculation" some day, as people said of other kinds of farms. He had certainly never seen a baby-farm yet, but then he was aware by this time that there were a considerable number of things that he had never seen in his small life. It certainly did not follow that he never would: and Hannah, if either he or Bunny married her, would be a capital person to help them to look after it, for she knew a great

deal about babies-she had told him all he knew, and Tor had said that was a great deal—and she would certainly be a great help. If babies were profitable, it might be a very good branch to open. He looked up at Phyl by-and-by to ask,

"Do babies cost much?”

The talk between husband and wife had meantime drifted to other channels, so that nobody saw the drift of the child's question. Tor laughed as he answered,

"I should think they did! the most expensive little beggars out. There's no end to what they cost one, eh, Phyl?"

Curly went back into his brown study. If he and Bunny could buy up babies cheap and sell them to people who had to give a great deal for them, it might be a very lucrative branch of the business. He did not think it was at all a bad idea of Tor's, and rather wondered why he didn't adopt it himself; but perhaps he had enough to do as it was, and he had Granny's work to do, often, as well as his own.

Time was, however, getting on, and Curly got up to go. The walk home was nothing for his sturdy little limbs-only two miles across country by an unfrequented path he and Bunny had discovered for themselves. By the road it was three miles, and by the ordinary foot-path two and a half; but the

little brothers had recently discovered a new and delightful way of their own which was shorter than any of the others, though to be sure it was rather rough walking.

This was, however, no drawback to them. They were light and active, and too small to be incommoded by the overhanging boughs of the trees, which would have caught the heads or hats of older persons. A wood is always enchanting to small children, and this wood was particularly attractive, for in the midst of a large clearing there was an old, deserted stone-quarry, where were several tumble-down huts in which, in old times, the quarrymen had lived, and beside the huts a dilapidated crane and other fascinating things, whilst the ground was all sparkling and shiny with fragments of quartz and spar which had at some time or another been quarried out of the rocks.

A stream ran trickling through the wood, and at the foot of the quarry had formed a deep dark pool, from the other side of which it escaped in a shining and bubbling little cascade. Altogether it was a very captivating spot, and the little boys had spent a great deal of time here during the past summer. Curly had begun to pay occasional visits to it already, now that the spring was coming again, and the first time he had gone there he had had a great surprise.