three cents more. They felt that they had done business enough for one day, and could afford to retire.

“Shall we divide the pins now?" asked Nimpo.

"Let's wait till your mother pays for them, and divide the money," said Anna.

"Ho! she won't buy your pins!" said Rush bluntly.

"Won't your mother buy them?" asked Nimpo. "No," said Anna, "she said she didn't want all the neighbor's old pins."

"No more does my mother," said Nimpo, a little nettled. "She buys them to please us. She has a whole package of papers of pins on her closet shelf.

"A whole package!" said Anna a little incredulously, for her mother never bought more than one paper at a time.

"Don't you believe it?" asked Rush fiercely. "Oh I suppose it's so, of course, if you say so," said Anna rather sneeringly.

"I can show it to you in a minute," said Nimpo, now very much provoked.

She hastily went into the closet, stepped up on a chair and reached down the package. It had but one paper taken out and Anna was quite impressed when Nimpo set it down before her on the table.

"There, Miss Anna Morris!" said Rush, "do you think our mother wants to buy the neighbor's old pins? She just does it to please us."

"Oh I didn't mean any thing," said Anna hastily, for she saw the rising storm in Nimpo's face, and she never had much fun when she and Nimpo were "mad." "Of course I know your mother has enough pins. I was only joking."

"Well," said Nimpo somewhat mollified, “you can leave your pins if you want to. I presume mother'll be willing to buy them all. But I don't want to have a store any longer."

"Nor I," said Rush. "I'm tired of it."

"Well then, let's dissolve," and dissolve they did at once, dividing the few remaining windmills and darts, but leaving the pins in one box together, to wait Mrs. Rievor's return.

The signs were taken down, but the counter

was forgotten, and there it stood till Sarah came to clear up, when she whisked it into the woodshed in short order.

Thus ended the windmill and dart business for the season.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BUILDING A LOG HOUSE.

P," said Rush the next Monday, "don't let's go to school to-day, let's go down home and play log house."

"Oh I don't want to," said Nimpo, who thought she was too old to play log house.

"Oh yes!" urged Rush, "pretty soon the wood'll be all split up, and then we can't. You want to go, don't you, Robbie?"

"Oh yes!" shouted Robbie, jumping around in delight at the prospect.

"Come, Nimp," said Rush, "we'll have real fun. I'll go to the store for some candy, and we can get raisins and things out of the store-room."

Nimpo hesitated. She hadn't played log house since she was twelve years old-nearly a year— because she thought it too childish.

"Come, Nimp, do," Rush teased, “you may have my little chair, and be the mother."

This offer was too tempting, and Nimpo yielded, slowly.

"Well I don't care-I'll go," she said at last. "Let's take the kitties," said Rush.

"Of course," answered Nimpo.

The kittens were caught, and in a few minutes the children were all off.

"I wonder what's in the wind now!" thought Mrs. Primkins, as she saw them go down the street. "Some new mischief, I'll be bound. If them young ones ain't the beater for scrapes I ever see! They're chock full of mischief as an egg is of meat, every bit and grain. I'm mighty glad their ma's coming home next week," and she turned back to her wash tub.

Now that Nimpo had really given up and decided to play, she entered into it with great spirit, for this game-with the help of her vivid imagination-had a delicious spice of picnicking and camping out, and all the delightful wild adventures she had read of.