TELL MAMMA, CHAPTER I. THE PORCH HOUSE. Mother, revere God's image in thy child, EMILY TAYLOR. ON'T-don't-don't, I say-I tell you what, if you do it again, you'll be sorry." And the speaker, a lad about fourteen years old, looked up with a menacing glance into a tree beneath which he was lying, and in which a rosy, roguish boy, some six or seven years younger, was perched, pelting his brother with the apples which loaded it. Erney," said the little chap, answering the threat. "Ought I? I would rather gather them myself than purchase the pleasures of eating without efforts at such a price. I am black and blue with your wretched little apples." "Oh! what a cram, Erney. Only one touched your leg." "Well now, mind you come down; you've eaten quite enough yourself, and you know you've been told twenty times not to climb the appletrees, the wood's very brittle, and you'll fall some day and break your leg;" and he turned again to his old position, which his little brother had disturbed, and to the book in which he was so interested; it lay open on the soft velvety turf flecked with the sunshine through the branches of the apple-tree, and he was lying at full length face downwards, his chin resting on his folded arms deep in the last volume of "Ivanhoe." orchard, with their arms about each other's waists, walked two girls in earnest conversation; and the merry laughter of two tiny specimens of humanity, seated on the ground at their nurse's feet, rang through the clear air, mingling harmoniously with the birds' songs in the trees. Beneath the large porch, which had gained for the old-fashioned, many-roomed old dwellingplace the name of the Porch House, sat a younglooking, pleasant-faced man, bearing so strong a likeness to the young folks in the orchard as to warrant them in addressing him as "Papa," his hands in his pockets enjoying a cigar, while in and out occasionally came to speak to him a sweet, gentle-looking woman, with a face that in repose seemed sad, but lighted up with such merry smiles at times, and had such roguish twinkles in the dark brown eyes, that those who knew her, and in whose homes she was a bright and loving presence always, knew that the gold with the world. "Me wants a tiss," suddenly bethought one of the tinies on the ground; and struggling up on to her fat legs, dropping as she tottered along treasures of daisies, dolls' frocks, tin tea-things, and sugar-plums she had collected in her pinafore, she reached the house at length, and held her rosy, chubby face up to her father. "Oh, nonsense!" he said. "Run away and play." "Don't say that"-and a gentle hand was laid on his shoulder—“never check an affectionate impulse, Tom, dear." "Oh! she doesn't mind, Meg! Here, come here, Dumpling," he called, "and give papa a kiss." "No; Dumpling not want one now," said the little maid, who had turned away, and was busy picking up the fallen treasures--a work of some her fat fingers she dropped another. "Oh! yes, you do! Come along." "No," very determinedly replied the child. "There," he said. "You see it is quite a mat ter of indifference." But the mother stepped quietly past him, and picking up the child in her arms, said, Come, pet, and kiss dear papa." Sheked in her mother's face, and read there the quiet but firm expression that meant obedience, and saying never a word she submitted her cheek to the paternal salute; but the chubby arms were not flung about his neck, the ruddy lips did not press their tiny kisses on his face. It was obedience now, not love. Then the mother put her down with a little sigh; and a smile of mingled vexation and amusement passed over the father's face as he said, |