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poringover this work more than once, was so amazed by her choice that he gave her a copy and refused the ten cents for it, and for months after the six-inch steed was housed, fed, groomed, and tended strictly according to the advice in the paper-covered volume, enjoying more sickness than health in the process; for the book contained so many interesting accounts of disease and accident that Garry put him through all in turn, including spavin, glanders, and wrenched shoulder.
    Later it was always Garry that the younger children turned to when baby sparrows were picked up in the park, when the guinea pig had colic or the kitten got a bone stuck in its throat, for she kept her head in emergencies and if she didn’t always know what to do concealed it by a competent and reassuring air which, with common sense, went a long way towards saving the situation.
    With a comfortable stretch she picked up her basket now and set off for the grapevine. The thick tight clusters hung in profusion, dead ripe and beginning to shrivel, sharp and rough to the tongue but filling the air with their wild heady perfume. There were plenty of briars too growing near, and Garry’s bare brown arms were scratched and her shirt torn by the time she had forced her way into the tangle to reach the last dangling bunch that the basket would hold. There were still plenty left to be reached by a little climbing and yanking; she wouldhave to come back tomorrow and bring a bigger basket, although this one was pretty heavy by the time she had packed all the grapes in and pressed them down.
    The shortest way home was to follow the stone fence for a little distance till she reached the gap, and then down across the orchard behind the big house. The long grass under the apple trees was strewn still with fruit —none of it very good, Garry decided as she picked up an apple here and there, bit into it and threw it away. The trees needed pruning; they had been neglected for too long.
    As she neared the house she remembered what Martin had said about the unfastened window. She set her basket down under one of the big lilac bushes by the kitchen door, deciding to investigate. All the windows on this side seemed tightly closed; she could see nails driven on the inside, just above the lower sash; the old country way of securing an empty house when there are no window locks. A lean-to woodshed barred her way at the end but the door stood ajar. She pushed it open. An old chopping block, some empty paint cans and a barrel, odds and ends of rusted iron—the sort of litter that seems to remain in the woodshed year in, year out, though families come and go. And at the farther end, another door.
    Garry never expected it to give to her touch, but it did.
    â€œThat’s one on Martin,” she thought triumphantly. “This was probably open all the time!”
    There is always a queer feeling about a house that has stood empty for long, especially an old house. The silence in it is deeper than the silence outdoors. One feels the hush not only of the room one is in but of all the other rooms as well, as though the house itself were listening. Without meaning to, Garry found herself treading on tiptoe as she moved.
    This was the kitchen, with the big old pantry off it. The living room was beyond, across an entry where stairs went up. There was the paneling, just as Martin had said, and the queer cupboard high in the wall at one side of the big fireplace where a blackened crane still swung below the chimney. How Kay would love this room, and the smaller parlor off it, with its built-in painted corner cupboard! Garry knew enough to tell that the iron latches and hinges on doors and closets were as old as the house itself, and that the irregular split-looking nails which held them in place were the old “butterfly” nails, handmade like the latches themselves.
    Kay must come up here sometime, but meanwhile Garry was determined to explore every corner first