"Now, Toddlekins," said little Trot,
"If we should meet a bear"——
"Good graciouth me!" said Toddlekins,
"You give me thuch a thcare!"
"If we should meet a bear," said Trot,
"Would you let me save your life?"
"Oh merthy! Yeth!" said Toddlekins,
"But I will not be your wife!"
OUR ADVENTURE AT THE FLUME.
By W. L.
dark, solemn-looking place it was, and although Fred and I were as dauntless explorers as Stanley or Greely, our courage began to ooze away as we looked in at the gloomy flume from which issued the cold and sluggish water. We had come upon the ruined archway of an old mill, still standing with crumbling walls above the slow-moving waters of its former busy tail-race. The low, dark archway was overhung with birch, witch-hazel, and thimbleberry; and as we peered into its blackness, suggestions of dragons and serpents, castle-dungeons and witches' caverns and monsters' dens came into our minds already sufficiently full of wild, boyish fancies and strange imaginings.
