sides, perhaps, in every domestic history that looks so fair and bright to the outsider-and certainly in the aspect of the Villa.

The side that did not overlook the village faced the wood, and was full of deep cool shadow and a kind of resinous perfume; the damp mossy ground rose elastic under the tread, and there was an undefined sound of life among the moving branches.

Not undefined was the sound of life round the Villa itself—childhood left to itself finds so many ways and means for amusement unthought of by older and perhaps wiser heads, which have learned to make calculations and to study weights unknown to the arithmetic of the school-room.

'I'll tell you what,' said Dick, the eldest of four youngsters: 'I have a scheme. We will pretend we are all living in a wild place, a sort of Robinson Crusoe island, and that we have to keep away the savages and the wild beasts, and to live on the things we catch.'

'But there won't be any savages or wild

beasts here,' interposed Ernie, who was three years younger, and thought it would be hard work on this hot afternoon to have to enact the prey whom his brother was pursuing. 'I don't want there to be wild beasts at all, and there won't be anything to catch.'

'Won't there, though?' said Dick. 'I'll soon make something. I'll tell you what we'll have great fun; we will make a raid on the kitchen, and see what Kätchen has got there. I know there is lots of fruit, for I saw Arnold gathering it, and we might get the things before they go in to dessert.'

'Won't it be stealing?' suggested little Gertrude.

Stealing! I should think it wouldn't. It will be just a raid—that's what it was called in the book Uncle Tom sent me at Christmasand we will take what we can, and be off before Kätchen has recovered her senses. Oh, it will be such fun! and then Kätchen will go to Babette, and will say, "Ach, die junge Engländer!" and Babette will go to mamma and will say, "Die yong gentlemen