and I didn't take it well when Mr. Lossing talked to me;
but the more I thought it over, the more I seemed to myself
like that hateful Minnie. Oh, mother, I ain't, am I? You shall
do just exactly as you like all the days of your life!"


AN ASSISTED PROVIDENCE

IT was the Christmas turkeys that should be held responsible.
Every year the Lossings give each head of a family in their employ,
and each lad helping to support his mother, a turkey at Christmastide.
As the business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it
is now well up in the hundreds, and requires a special contract.
Harry, one Christmas, some two years ago, bought the turkeys
at so good a bargain that he felt the natural reaction
in an impulse to extravagance. In the very flood-tide of the
money-spending yearnings, he chanced to pass Deacon Hurst's stables
and to see two Saint Bernard puppies, of elephantine size but of
the tenderest age, gambolling on the sidewalk before the office.
Deacon Hurst, I should explain, is no more a deacon than I am;
he is a livery-stable keeper, very honest, a keen and solemn sportsman,
and withal of a staid demeanor and a habitual garb of black.
Now you know as well as I any reason for his nickname.

Deacon Hurst is fond of the dog as well as of that noble animal
the horse (he has three copies of "Black Beauty" in his stable,
which would do an incalculable amount of good if they were ever read!);
and he usually has half a dozen dogs of his own, with pedigrees
long enough for a poor gentlewoman in a New England village.
He told Harry that the Saint Bernards were grandsons of Sir Bevidere,