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Hosack's two podgy members like the contents of a club sandwich, Alice allowed herself to be kissed on both cheeks, murmured an appropriate response, greeted the Thatchers, waved to Hosack who came forward as quickly as he could with pins and needles in one leg and threw a searching glance about for Gilbert. Every one caught it and gathered instinctively that Mrs. Jekyll had been making mischief.

All the men and boys of the neighborhood were helping; the labor was carefully divided; some were bringing in great bundles of the palm leaves; others pitched these up to the thatchers, who were skilfully fitting them under and over the poles of the roof framework and then beating them firmly home.

Whilst these successive processes went forward, many others had been engaged all the morning cutting rushes; and the scraws were no sooner laid on, than half a dozen thatchers mounted the roof, and long before the evening was closed, a school-house, capable of holding near two hundred children, was finished. But among the peasantry no new house is ever put up without a hearth-warming and a dance.

In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity.

"Oh, yes, m'm;" making a curious sound with closed lips. "They are well. Oh, the Thatchers have been visiting them and are coming out here for a week why, on Saturday, and to-day is Thursday. Chilian, do you hear that?" "What?" he asked, closing his book over his own letter. "Why, the Thatchers are coming on Saturday, not a long notice, and I don't know how many.

The Thatchers were there, the Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor, and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. They were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head at Tom.

What time has eaten modern and clumsy hands have tried to repair; yet a glance will tell you that the old sound work means to outwear the patches. The last of these famous thatchers lived in the round-house on your right as you leave Gantick by the seaward road. Yet he clung to his work, being one of those lean men upon whom age, exposure, and even drink take a long while to tell.

'What do these men do by day? he said. 'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men. Some are brickmakers, some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers. They are all known to me very well. Nine of 'em are of your own congregation. 'I can't help that, said Stockdale. 'O, I know you can't. I only told you.

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon Chance all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same among these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.

"Young men who are so patriotic in the hour of need must be men of high character." "Maybe they are and maybe they aren't," replied the insurance agent, "but old Mrs. Crane told me she was going to buy chickens again next week for her chicken-yard. There was so many stolen last year that she gave up keeping them, but next week she's beginning again, and next week the Thatchers are going away.