In and out, In and out, Plaiting colors bright; See! the May-pole standing there On the children, whose young hands HOW COUSIN MARION HELPED. BY ALICE BALCH ABBOT. "THEN you will tell Dean and Lucy that I shall expect them not only to dine and spend the evening, but as soon as they come from school? Now, don't shake your head, Cousin Agnes; it is Friday afternoon, so there will be no to-morrow's lessons in the way"; and young Mrs. Maxwell turned from her cousin's door as if the matter of her guests for dinner was fully settled. The mother of the guests in question evidently did not agree with her, for she hastened to remonstrate : Why, Marion, you have been at home only three days, and your sister arrived but yesterday. Surely you ought not to trouble yourself so soon with the children." "Trouble!" and then young Mrs. Maxwell laughed in merry protest. "I thought you knew by this time, Cousin Agnes, that I look upon the twins in any light but that. As for Sister, she is as anxious to meet them as I am to have her do so. To tell the truth, she had not been in the house more than an hour or two when she inquired when she was to be presented to those wonderful twin cousins of whom I was always writing." “Oh, Marion, you must have been drawing upon your imagination. Even I, their mother, would never think of Dean and Lucy as more than an ordinary boy and girl, though their twinship may have made them rather better comrades than some brothers and sisters - at least so I have thought till lately." Mrs. Maxwell looked up quickly. ever, I presume if there is any trouble, you will soon find it out." "Indeed I will, if it is possible"; and Mrs. Maxwell bade her cousin good morning and walked down the street with a serious look on her usually bright face. "Cousin Marion" was an element which had been in combination with the lives of the Eliot twins for about a year and a half. When Dean had heard of the intended marriage of his cousin Jack, whom he regarded with the hero-worship that boyhood of twelve often offers to manhood of twice that age, he had been somewhat dismayed. But the new cousin came and was seen, and conquered; and not many weeks after his wife's advent Cousin Jack had declared his nose to be quite out of joint. Lucy's devotion was rather to be expected, but Dean had almost felt obliged to apologize for the rapid acquisition of his regard. "You see," he had remarked to his mother, "she is n't like most of them; she always has something to show a fellow, so he does n't have to think up what to talk about; and she 's read all the books I like, and remembers the parts I do; and she can play tennis like a shot, and my eye! can't she make good doughnuts!" Proud as Mrs. Maxwell was of the friendship of her young twin cousins, she was even prouder of their affection for each other. Shortly after making their acquaintance, she had written in a letter to her sister, "You know I always used to say that I thought a twin brother was the "Why, you don't mean that they have choicest possession a small girl could have; quarreled?" "No, I should hardly call it by that word. It may be only a fancy, but since school began it has seemed as if something must have occurred; for several times I have found Lucy studying alone, and Dean has seemed to have various plans afoot that cause him to leave for school before Lucy, and return later. How and Dean and Lucy Eliot seem to prove that my notion was correct." And now that same sister had come to visit her and was to make the acquaintance of her boy and girl friends. It would certainly be too bad if a coolness between the brother and sister should occur at this time. Consequently it was with a feeling nearly akin to anxiety that Mrs. Maxwell awaited her afternoon guests. Her sister was lying down, so when Lucy arrived, a little after four, she found her hostess alone. In response to her cousin's question as to Dean's whereabouts, Lucy's answer was a careless, "He said he was not ready when I started, and would come later; and as I knew he would like it better, I came without him." There was an unusual sharpness in the speaker's voice that caused Mrs. Maxwell to glance keenly into the face opposite as she asked: "Is n't that rather a new idea?" Lucy bit her lip, then said suddenly, “It is a new idea, Cousin Marion- at least it has been growing ever since school began. You know Dean and I have always been pretty even at school, except that he is better in mathematics than I, and Latin is a little easier for me, though last year there were only three months when my Latin mark was higher than his. This year it is all different, and I think I know the reason. Sam Crane has gone away to school. He and Dean used to try to beat each other, but now Dean just manages to slip along like the other two boys in the class; and we don't have any more nice times studying together, for I won't do that slipping, sliding way. Then there's tennis. You know how hard I practised while he was away last summer. When he came back I asked him to play with me just the way he would if I were a boy. I beat; and I have never known whether he let me or not. if it had been Sam, Dean would have played him again the next day; but he has never asked me for another game, and he had better not, if he is going to give me such baby drop-serves!" The scorn of that last sentence made Lucy's voice tremble, and she waited a second, then went on: Now, "I wonder if I ought to be willing to let things go on as they are. Perhaps some day I shall become used to it, and not mind hearing Dean make a remark like one Tom Jackson made last week. Kitty overheard him say that he didn't see what schoolgirls were good at, except looking pretty and taking up the time in recitation. Cousin Marion, what do you think I ought to do about it?" even Lucy's notions of the state of affairs, as she answered: "I am not quite sure that I had better give any advice till I have thought the matter over. Suppose we let it rest for a day or two, and perhaps some way in which I can help will suggest itself." "Well, I don't want you to think I'm a goose, but I do want to ask you one question. When you were my age, did you ever think that boys were sort of" Lucy paused in perplexity, but her cousin came gaily to the rescue. "A necessary evil? Is that what you wished to say? Let me see, you are just fourteen. Do you know that if it had not been for just one thing I might have had to answer 'yes' to your question? Did I ever tell you about the summer we spent in Oldport? No? Then suppose I do. It was the year I was twelve. Our home was to be remodeled, so the whole household was transported to Oldport. We children were highly delighted; for not only were we to live in a great-aunt's house where our mother had visited when a little girl, but we were also to be next door to a large family of cousins.” Just at this point the sound of steps on the staircase and the closing of a door in the next room brought the story to a sudden end, and Mrs. Maxwell rose, saying: "There, I am afraid the story must wait, for I hear Sister Emily on the stairs, and Kate is coming with the tea." Lucy gave a sigh of disappointment, and then asked quickly: "Cousin Marion, won't you just tell me what the one thing' was ?" 6 Mrs. Maxwell looked up from her work of arranging the table for the tea-tray, and had barely time to answer, with a comic smile of solemnity, the one word, "Cows!" before her sister entered the room. "Emily, this is the girl-half of Jack's twin cousins; the boy will appear later." Following this introduction, there came to Lucy a half-hour of unalloyed delight. Afternoon tea with Cousin Marion was always a pleasure; but on the present occasion the charm seemed doubled, and by the time she had finished her cup of tea and three macaMrs. Maxwell looked serious enough to satisfy roons Lucy had quite decided that Miss Emily was just what Cousin Marion's sister ought to run away to write two or three notes. Dean, to be. I know you want to do more than look at the pictures in that book. Suppose we take it into the hall with these doughnuts. Sister Emily and Lucy can amuse each other. By the way, Lucy, she can tell you about that summer." "What summer?" Miss Lisle asked. At length her hostess, who was seated by the window, exclaimed: "There comes Dean. Lucy, will you please ring the dining-room bell for Kate, and ask her to bring a plate of doughnuts?" When Lucy returned from her errand, her brother had finished shaking hands with Miss Lisle, and the two were bending over a new "The one we spent in Oldport; and you are requested to dwell particularly upon the occasion when my notions of girls' supe "COUSIN MARION, WHAT DO YOU THINK I OUGHT TO DO ABOUT IT?'" riority received such a blow. Do you Marion was," she exclaimed. "A rather lively kind, as I remember; and the time I am to tell about was when she was at her liveliest. How much had she told you?" 66 'Only that you spent the summer book which the latter had brought down- in a great-aunt's house, and that there were stairs. some cousins next door. Were they boys or girls?" A moment later, Kate appeared with the doughnuts. Mrs. Maxwell took the plate, and holding it out to Dean, said, "Now I am going "Both. Some were grown up; but there were a boy, Ned, and a girl, Clara, very near our ages. Besides these, there were two other cousins, Herbert and Carl, who came to visit us, and a boy named John, who lived in the house beyond Ned and Clara; so you see it was a ་་ T 'HOIST WE DID WITH ALL OUR MIGHT." (SEE PAGE 538.) question of three girls and four boys. Marion certainly was what people call a tomboy; but I remember mother's hunting all over New York, that spring, to find a certain stout gingham which she had made up into what she called 'climbing-dresses,' so I think we must have been expected to have a good time. My gown was sufficient for any demands I made upon it, but Marion's had to be patched more than once. "How the rivalry between the boys and us began, I am not quite sure; but I think it was over the Indian question. My uncle had been in the firearms business, and among my cousins' playthings were four full-sized wooden models of muskets. These just supplied the boys with weapons. They decided to be early settlers, the Indians to be merely imaginary. "We girls were told that we could be the settlers' wives and stay in the fort while they went out to fight. That did not suit; and Marion announced that we would also be settlers and fight; but the boys declared we could n't, without guns. Finally we nobly offered to be Indians; but they only laughed and said we could n't be anything but squaws. That finished the discussion; we told them we would n't be old squaws, but real Indian chiefs, and we would fight them if they dared come near our camp, which would be in the chokeberry bushes at the top of one of the slopes in the fields back of the barn. The question of our weapons was settled by Clara's proposing bean-poles. "I remember how exciting it was, as we crept along the further side of the stone wall till we were at the summit of the slope at the foot of which the four boys were holding a council, and then with a wild yell leaped over the wall and charged down upon them. "They lifted their gun-stocks, and one of them shouted, 'Bang! There, Marion, you 're dead!' But Marion called back, 'I'm not, either'; and charged on, her bean-pole at full tilt, and Clara and I yelling at her heels. You're not playing fair,' Ned called out; but somehow the advancing poles were too much for them, and they turned and ran. When Clara had proposed the bean-poles she had said, 'Of course we will only wave them in the air'; but Marion had calmly remarked, 'I wonder how much a little poke with one would hurt'; so I do not know, now, what would have happened had those boys stood firm. "Then there was the 'shebang.' Those cousins of ours were the most inventive of boys and girls. In the case of the shebang their genius had been used in constructing and naming a most peculiar four-wheeled vehicle, in which they coasted down the slopes in the fields. was steered by a rope tied to the axle of the front wheels. Before our family had arrived, It |