making his selection; then emerging with an armful of pears, he shouted
after Miss Christie Grant, who had got a good way down the walk by this
time.

"I don't deny, ma'am, that these air aggravating now and then, but
anyhow they haven't painted my palings pink and my door pea-green."

Miss Christie returned. She seldom took the part of any children,
excepting for the sake of argument or for family reasons; and she felt
at that moment that the Daniel Mortimers were related to her, and that
these, though they called her "aunt," were not.

"Ye should remember," she observed, with severity, "that ye had already
left your house when they painted it."

"Remember it!" exclaimed the gardener, straightening himself; "ay, ay, I
remember it--coming along the lane that my garden sloped down to, so
that every inch of it could be seen. It had been all raked over, and
there, just out of the ground, growing up in mustard-and-cress letters
as long as my arm, I saw '_This genteel residence to let, lately
occupied by N. Swan, Esq._' I took my hob-nailed boots to them last
words, and I promise you I made the mustard-and-cress fly."

"Well, ye see," observed Miss Christie, who was perfectly serious,
"there is great truth in your saying that those children did too much as
they pleased; but ye must consider that Mr. Mortimer didn't like to
touch any of them, because they were not his own."

"That's just it, ma'am, and Mrs. Mortimer didn't like to touch any of
them because they _were her own;_ so between the two they got to be, I