“Well, no, dear; grown people cannot settle differences in that pretty way.  We must wait till he apologizes, and then we shall gladly be friends again.  You see Mr. Dover was a missionary in India for many years, and we were very intimate with his mother.  Our gardens join, and a gate in our fence led across their field to the back street, and was most convenient when we wanted to walk by the river or send the maids on errands in a hurry.  The old lady was very neighborly, and we were quite comfortable till Thomas came home and made trouble.  He’d lost his wife and children, poor man, and his liver was out of order, and living among the heathen so long had made him melancholy and queer; so he tried to amuse himself with gardening and keeping hens.”

“I’m glad!  I love flowers and biddies,” murmured Rosy, listening with deep interest to this delightful mixture of quarrels and heathen, sorrow, poultry, mysterious diseases, and gardens.

“He had no right to shut up our gate and forbid our crossing that little field, and no gentleman would have dared to do it after all our kindness to his mother,” exclaimed Miss Henny, so suddenly and violently that Rosamond nearly fell off the old lady’s lap with the start she gave.

“No, sister, I don’t agree there.  Mr. Thomas had a perfect right to do as he liked with his own land; but I think we should have had no trouble if you had been willing to sell him the corner of our garden where the old summer-house is, for his hens,” began Miss Penny in a mild tone.

“Sister! you know the tender memories connected with that bower, and how terrible it would have been to me to see it torn down, and noisy fowls clucking and pecking where I and my poor Calvin once sat together,” cried Miss Henny, trying to look sentimental, which was an impossible feat for a stout lady in a flowery muslin gown, and a fly-away cap full of blue ribbons, on a head once flaxen and now gray.

“We won’t discuss the point, Henrietta,” said the elder lady with dignity; whereupon the other returned to the letter, bridling and tossing her head in a way which caused Rosy to stare, and resolve to imitate it when she played be a proud princess with her dolls.

“Well, dear, that was the beginning of the trouble,” continued Miss Penny; “and now we don’t speak, and the old lady misses us, I’m sure, and I often long to run in and see her, and I’m so sorry you can’t enjoy the wonders of that house, for it’s full of beautiful and curious things, most instructive for children to observe.  Mr. Thomas has been a great traveller, and has a tiger skin in the parlor so natural it’s quite startling to behold; also spears, and bows and arrows, and necklaces of shark’s teeth, from the Cannibal Islands, and the loveliest stuffed birds, my dear, all over the place, and pretty shells and baskets, and ivory toys, and odd dresses, and no end of wonderful treasures.  Such a sad pity you can’t see them!” and Miss Penny looked quite distressed at the child’s loss.