"So do I," said Alice. "I wonder when she is going home?"

Mrs. Owen looked up from her writing. "She is going to stay ten days longer, and then, if I can persuade her, she will come back to us for the whole summer."

Mrs. Owen turned to look at her little girls. Their faces wore a discontented, rebellious look.

"Did it ever occur to you that it is of no importance whether you like the way things are or not?" she asked. "You are two very small, unimportant people. Did you ever stop to think what your grandmother has had to bear?"

They had never thought anything about it. Their minds had been entirely taken up with their own affairs.

"Your father was your grandmother's only child," Mrs. Owen went on, and her voice was unsteady. "She owned the big house we used to live in, and every summer they came to it, so that your father and your Uncle William and I played together when we were children. When your father became a doctor and married me and settled down here, she gave us the house for a wedding present. Think, Peggy, for a minute, of what it meant to you to lose your father. But you had only known him a few short years, and you and Alice are so young you have a whole rich life before you. But your grandmother is not young; she had had him all his life, and he was her only child."

There were tears in her mother's eyes. Peggy had seldom seen them there.

She slipped down from her chair and went over to her mother, putting an arm about her waist. It was not of her grandmother that she was thinking, but of her mother, who had lost so much, and yet was so brave.

Mrs. Owen dried her eyes and was silent for a minute.

Then she said: "Your grandmother is a very lonely person."

"But she lives in the city where there are lots and lots of people,"

said Alice.

"Yes, and she has many friends and acquaintances, but that does not prevent her being lonely. We are the only near relations she has. You remember how she wanted to take Peggy and bring her up. I could not consent to that. Then she wanted us all to spend the summer with her, and we all of us like better to be at home. But I think she would really like to spend the summer with us. Now, Peggy, the better one knows people, the more one finds to like in them, if they are good people; and it is just a question of what we are looking out for most in this world, whether it is to be happy ourselves, or to try to make other people happy. If we are trying to be happy ourselves, all kinds of things turn up that we did not expect, to spoil our fun. After all, it is not so very important, whether we are happy or not."

"I think it is very important," said Peggy. "And I guess you thought so when you were a little girl, mother."

"You are right, Peggy, I did. But now the question is, will you children try to make your grandmother happy?"

"I'll try," said Peggy; "but I just can't stand it if she doesn't care about my dear Rhode Island Reds."

But her grandmother did grow to appreciate them, to Peggy's great surprise. One morning she went out with Peggy when she fed the chickens.

It was a sunny morning, with a soft blue sky and fleecy clouds.

"To think of my being here all these days and not having seen your hens," said Mrs. Owen.

"I thought, if you waited until you wanted to see them, it would be more of a treat," said Peggy.

"Who put that idea into your head, your mother?"

"No, I don't want people to see them unless it is a treat."

Peggy's grandmother looked at the little girl's eager, upturned face.

"Do you like them so much, Peggy?" she asked.

Peggy hesitated. It was one of the great decisions of her life. On her answer depended the success or failure of her intercourse with her grandmother. If she said, "I like them well enough," they would remain just seven Rhode Island hens and a c.o.c.k, so far as her grandmother was concerned. She looked up at her grandmother, inquiringly. Her grandmother smiled down at her pleasantly.

"I just love them!" said Peggy.

"What a handsome c.o.c.k!" said her grandmother.

This compliment to her favorite pleased Peggy. "Isn't he a beauty?" she said.

"He certainly is," said her grandmother warmly.

"His name is Mr. Henry c.o.x," said Peggy, in a burst of confidence.

"What a nice name," said her grandmother.

And so it was that the elder Mrs. Owen became interested in feeding the hens and chickens and helping hunt for eggs, and when she went home, at the end of the visit, they were all glad to think that she was to spend the summer with them.

"I am glad she is coming back," said Peggy to Alice. "Do you know, Alice, I think when she comes back, we'll teach her the geography game."

"I don't think she's got a very nice name," said Alice. "I'm glad they didn't call me Rebecca, for her. And she can only live in one State."

"Yes," said Peggy, "but it is such a nice State. She could live in Rhode Island, with all my dear Rhode Island Reds."

THE END