Mother Carey's Chickens

known as rhomboids, these and other geometrical figures abound, but circles are comparatively few. In a true family circle a father and a mother first clasp each other's hand

ce shape. You can stand as handsomely as ever you like, but it simply won't "come round." The minute that two, three, four, five, join in, the "roundness" grows, and the mer

possible to enumerate all the little geometrical peculiarities which keep a rhomboid from being a circle, but one person can just "stand out" enough to spoil the shape, or put hands behind back and refuse to join at all. About the ugliest thing in the universe is that non-joining habit! You would think that anybody,

ght drop out and not be missed, but Captain Carey was full of vitality, warmth, and high spirits. It is strange so many men think that the possession of a child makes them a father; it does not; but it is a curious and very general misapprehension. Captain Carey was a boy with his boys, and a gallant lover with his girls; to his wife-oh! we will not even touch upon that ground; she never

ld-fashioned novels the devoted servant always insisted on remaining without wages, but this story concerns itself with life at a later dat

en an extra five hundred dollars a year when he was at sea, and on the strength of this addition to their former income he intended to increase the amount of his life insur

s business, but Allan was seriously ill with nervous prostration, and no money put into his business ever had come out, even in a modified form. The Admiral was at the other end of the world, and even had he been near at hand Mrs. Carey would never have confided the family difficulties to him. She could hardly have allowed him even to tide her over her immediate pressing anxieties, remembering

was too expensive to be longer possible as a home, and the question of moving was a matter of general concern. Jo

nobody in the universe wanted them at the present moment; that Allan's little daughter Julia had no source of income whatever after her father's monthly bills were paid, and that her only relative outside of the Careys, a certain Miss Ann Chadwick, had refused to admit her into her house. "Mr. Carey only asked Miss Chadwick as a last resort," wrote Mr. Manson, "for his very soul quailed at the thought of letting you, his brother's widow, suffer any more by his losses than was necessary, and he studiously refused to let you know the nature and extent of his need. Miss Chadwick's only response to his request was

once by Mrs. Carey, but the children, though very sympathetic with Uncle Allan and lou

ng the letter, "there seems to

ave Julia come and live with us,-be

she heard the swift feet of the youngest petrel ascending the stairs. "Come in! Where is there a sweeter Peter,

How can you?" i

dressed," retorted Peter's mother. "Are you

ague affirmative nod, his whole mind being on the extr

nless I were obliged to, children, I should be sorry to go against all your wishe

ead or heart or conscience a chime of words. "Next to father!" Making a magnificent oratorical leap she finished her sentence with only a second's break,-"peacock, but if mother thinks Julia is a duty, a duty she is, and we mus

wall side of the bed, the middle seat in the carriage, the heel of the loaf, the underdone biscuit, the tail part

difference to you, Ki

,-in everything! Now Julia'll be fourth, and I shall b

nother one into the family, when we've been saying for a week there isn't even enough for us five to live

tle seed of hard self-love in Gilbert that she wanted him to dig up

chicken after all,

s chicken, and I'm Capt

d Captain Carey's eldest son like to do for his only cousin, a little girl younger than himself,-a girl who had a very sill

in great moral discom

't want to be selfish,

ut it isn't logic, all

t isn't enou

logic belong at the top, in the scale of reasons why we do certain things? If we ask Julia to com

rk, and always was."

d her cousins' opinion of her, that is ver

in the eye and speak t

you like Ju

But," she continued, "I do not like several of the remarks th

ted us, Kitty and I got so tired of Gladys Ferguson's dresses, her French maid, her bedroom furniture, and her travels abroad, that we wrote her name on a piece of paper, put it in a box, and

s too," suggested Gilbert, "then we can say

nd brother,

y may y

Seven in al

ring look

on thus," la

e they? I pr

red, 'Sev

us makes f

ladys and

o was especially uproarious, and who had an idea he had

at do you say, Peter

l at the age of four, but the same idea of the universe still existed in Gilbert's mind. A boy of thirteen ought perhaps to