haps you spend as much time in this room as in any, and entertain as much company here!"

Cousin Ann always had been, always would he, a frequent visitor, for she was devoted to the family in her own peculiar way; what therefore could Nancy be proposing to do with the Carey Curse?

"Listen, my good girl," Nancy now said to Kathleen, after she had closed the door. "Thou dost know that the china-packer comes early to-morrow morn, and that e'en now the barrels and boxes and excelsior are bestrewing the dining room?"

"Yes."

"Then you and I, who have been brought up under the shadow of those funeral urns, and have seen that tidy mother scrubbing the ears of that unwilling boy ever since we were born,-you and I, or thou and I, perhaps I should say, will do a little private packing before the true packer arriveth."

"Still do I not see the point, wench!" said the puzzled Kathleen, trying to model her conversation on Nancy's, though she was never thoroughly successful.

"Don't call me 'wench,' because I am the mistress and you my tiring woman, but when you watch, and assist me, at the packing, a great

light will break upon you," Nancy answered. "In the removal of cherished articles from Charlestown to Beulah, certain tragedies will occur, certain accidents will happen, although Cousin Ann knows that the Carey family is a well regulated one. But if there are accidents, and there will be, my good girl, then the authors of them will be forever unknown to all but thou and I. Wouldst prefer to pack this midnight or at cock crow, for packing is our task!”

"I simply hate cock crow, and you know it," said Kathleen testily. "Why not now? Ellen and Gilbert are out and mother is rocking Peter to sleep."

"Very well; come on; and step softly. It won't take long, because I have planned all in secret, well and thoroughly. Don't puff and blow like that! Mother will hear you!"

"I'm excited," whispered Kathleen as they stole down the back stairs and went into the parlor for the funeral urns, which they carried silently to the dining room. These safely deposited, they took You Dirty Boy from its abominable pedestal of Mexican onyx (also Cousin Ann's gift) and staggered under its heavy weight, their natural strength being considerably sapped by suppressed laughter.

Nancy chose an especially large and stout bar

rel. They put a little (very little) excelsior in the bottom, then a pair of dumb-bells, then a funeral urn, then a little hay, and another funeral urn, crosswise. The spaces between were carelessly filled in with Indian clubs. On these they painfully dropped You Dirty Boy, and on top of him the other pair of funeral urns, more dumbbells, and another Indian club. They had packed the barrel in the corner where it stood, so they simply laid the cover on top and threw a piece of sacking carelessly over it. The whole performance had been punctuated with such hysterical laughter from Kathleen that she was too weak to be of any real use, she simply aided and abetted the chief conspirator. The night was not as other nights. The girls kept waking up to laugh a little, then they went to sleep, and waked again, and laughed again, and so on. Nancy composed several letters to her Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad accident that had occurred. As she concocted these documents between her naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the present joy nor dim that anticipation which is even greater.

Nancy was downstairs early next morning and managed to be the one to greet the china-packers.

"We filled one barrel last evening," she explained to them. "Will you please head that up before you begin work?" which one of the men obligingly did.

"We'll mark all this stuff and take it down to the station this afternoon," said the head packer to Mrs. Carey.

"Be careful with it, won't you?" she begged. "We are very fond of our glass and china, our clocks and all our little treasures."

"You won't have any breakage so long as deal with James Perkins & Co.!" said the packer.

you

Nancy went back into the room for a moment to speak with the skilful, virtuous J. P. & Co. "There's no need to use any care with that corner barrel," she said carelessly. "It has nothing of value in it!"

James Perkins went home in the middle of the afternoon and left his son to finish the work, and the son tagged and labelled and painted with all his might. The Dirty Boy barrel in the corner, being separated from the others, looked to him especially important, so he gave particular attention to that; pasted on it one label marked "Fragile," one "This Side Up," two "Glass with Care," and finding several "Perishables" in his pocket tied on a few of those, and removed the

entire lot of boxes, crates, and barrels to the freight depot.

The man who put the articles in the car was much interested in the Dirty Boy barrel. "You'd ought to have walked to Greentown and carried that one in your arms," he jeered. "What is the precious thing, anyway?"

"Don't you mind what it is," responded young Perkins. "Jest you keep everybody 'n' everything from teching it! Does this lot o' stuff have to be shifted 'tween here and Greentown.' "No; not unless we git kind o' dull and turn it upside down jest for fun."

"I guess you're dull consid'able often, by the way things look when you git through carryin' 'em, on this line," said Perkins, who had no opinion of the freight department of the A. & B. The answer, though not proper to record in this place, was worthy of Perkins's opponent, who had a standing grudge against the entire race of expressmen and carters who brought him boxes and barrels to handle. It always seemed to him that if they were all out of the country or dead he would have no work to do.