Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-05-17

peace of mind! When he returned from hi:
Boulogne trip, expecting to find life going
on as peacefully as before, his sisters greeted
him with the information that the house
next door had been taken by widow with g
large family of children, most of them quite
young. Sand really, added Miss Janet,
plaintively, "fond as 1 am of children, ]
cannot stand the annoyance of having them
continually in our garden-it does spoil the
beds SOP
The Colonel, who was eating his supper.
looked up angrily, for he hated children,
although having no nephews and nieces he
knew very little about them. "Have they
been walking over my flower beds?"
"No, no, dear Frederick" broke in Miss
Sophia. Janet doesn't mean that. Do you
Janet?"
The corkscrews at the other side of the
table nodded an emphatic negative, and
Miss Sophia continued: "We were only
thinking OF those dreadful children of Mrs
Ildersley's who were here five years ago.
And I am sure" she added, consolingly,
''these look remarkably nice children, re-
markably NICE"
"Humph !' calculated her brother; "I
hope so, I'm sure" And with that he ex-
tended his hand to each of the ladies in
turn as they prepared to retire. He never
by any chance kissed them; and when a
boy, he was not demonstrative; and when
Miss Janet sometimes sighed over this
peculiarly of dear Frederick's," and con-
trasted him with other peoples brothers,
Miss Sophia rebuked her sharply. Would
you have Frederick slobber over US in
public as that odious Mr.. Green does over
his sisters ?" she would demand sternly,
squashing Miss Janet's murmured "Only in
private, you know" with the unanswerable
argument: "Men can't see when to do a
thing and when not to do it; and Frederick,
my dear, is no better than the rest"
AS far as the Colonel could judge during
the first two or three weeks after his arrival
home the conduct of the children next door
certainly bore out Miss Sophia's statement
that they were remarkably nice children"
They never disturbed him as he sat in the
garden by uttering those unearthly shrieks
and yells which he imagined were the chief
amusements of youth; nor did they chase
his sisters cat, nor roll their balls along his
trimly-kept gravel paths. Indeed, he was
fain at length to acknowledge that s'for
children" they were not bad; and he speed
lily forgot their existence.
The fact of the matter really was that the
children were busy at their lessons during
the greater part of the day, and their gov
erness, an orphan, who lived almost all the
year with them, did not permit any shirk-
ing of duty, so that the combined effect of
strict lessons and a wholesome awe of their
crotchety neighbor served to keep the chill
dren from disgracing themselves in his
eyes,
We do not think Colonel Chalmers would
have felt fattered if he had known the feel
ings of fear and awe with which the chill
dren regarded him. "The Ogre" they called
him among themselves; and, although their
mother and Miss Grant always rebuked
them if they heard them speaking of him as
such, yet even they looked upon him as a
most peculiar and decidedly disagreeable
neighbor, and kept the children as much as
possible out of his way.
But lessons do not last forever, and about
a month after Colonel Chalmers return
Mrs. Tracy told Miss Grant that it would
be as well to begin the Christmas holidays.
The children were wild with glee at being
let off their studies, and began elaborate
for Christmas, which occupied
them SO we'll that they were quieter than
ever.
Mrs. Tracy was relieved. She had
feared that, freed from restraint, the
children would begin to annoy their neigh
bors, but 80 far they were as good as gold.
It was, therefore, with mind quite at ease
that she set off the day after New Years