BY MARGARET SIDNEY.
"What did George Washington do, I wonder, on the Fourth of July?" said Harper Smith, rattling his tin money bank with an awful din.
"Mercy! I don't know," said Aunt Nancy, shielding her ears, and thinking twice as much about the noise as she did about the question. "Do pray be still! I'm sure I wish there wasn't any Fourth of July."
"Oh, Harp, you ninny!" cried his brother Joe. "There wasn't any Fourth at all till George Washington made it."
"You better study up," said Aunt Nancy, coming to her senses, as Harper, very much confused, stopped the rattling. "You don't begin to realize what the guns and the fire-crackers and the torpedoes, and all the other dreadful things that blow up people and knock off boys' fingers and toes, are for. It would be a great deal better if boys had more history in their heads and less money in their pockets. That's the way to celebrate, I think; and I mean to ask your father about it."
"Oh, don't, don't, Aunt Nancy—please don't!" cried both boys, in the greatest dismay, while Lucy ran in from the next room, with wide-open eyes, at the uproar. "Don't make father take away our money; we always have it, you know."
"You can have your money," said Aunt Nancy, putting up her spectacles to look at their distressed faces, and beginning to laugh at the sight; "but you ought to know what you're spending it for. I would, I know, be able to tell something about my country, and who fought for it."
When Mr. Smith came home the boys were both out in the barn, looking at a very new colony of kittens in an old barrel. So Aunt Nancy had about five minutes of peace and quiet, which she speedily made the most of, I can assure you—talking away so fast that Mr. Smith had to follow her pretty closely, with eyes as well as ears on the alert.
When she had finished, "Capital," was all he said. And then the boys came tearing in, and they had tea.
After supper, "Now for a story," cried Joe, getting possession of the chair next to Mr. Smith, while Harper flew for another.