Will you have some of your own currants, my dear ?--Hilda has been helping me a great deal, Father," she added, addressing her husband.

"I don't know how I should have got all my currants picked without her help." "Has she so ?" exclaimed the farmer, fixing his keen gray eyes on the girl.

"Waal! waal! to think o' that! Why, we sh'll hev her milkin' that cow soon, after all; hey, Huldy ?" Hildegarde looked up bravely, with a little smile.

"I will try," she said, cheerfully, "if you will risk the milk, Farmer Hartley." The old farmer returned her smile with one so bright and kind and genial that somehow the ice bent, then cracked, and then broke.

The old Hilda shrank into so small a space that there was really very little left of her, and the new Hilda rose from table feeling that she had gained a new friend.
So it came to pass that about an hour later our heroine was walking beside the farmer on the way to the barnyard, talking merrily, and swinging the basket which she was going to fill with eggs.