KA

TIN-TYPES.

ATY came into the breakfast-room with a shy look on her merry little face. Papa was deep in his newspaper, and did not observe her. Harry raised both hands, rolled up both eyes, and stood on tiptoe in astonishment; but a violent gesture from Katy made him whistle in the "Oh!" that was about to roll forth. Shy? I should think so. First, there was her beautiful hair, driven from her forehead and piled above it in a roughand-tumble heap. Second, there was her beautiful hair pulled through a - doughnut, do you call it? - and padded on somehow to the back of her head. Then, as seemed necessary, there were sundry bits of nets and ribbons to keep things from flying apart, and she was in truth a funny little puss to look on.

Katy sat down to the breakfast-table and tried to act as if nothing had happened. And papa, laying aside his newspaper, caught a glimpse of her, and then took a long look, and cried, "Overslept, Katy! Have not combed your hair this morning, dear?"-and then Harry's fun had free course, and Katy laughed, too, a little, and blushed a good deal.

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Why, papa, I never combed my hair so much in my life."

"Took her all night," cried Harry. "She began at bedtime, and has just finished."

Papa came up slowly, in great pretended amazement, and touched the wonderful doughnut cautiously. "The wheel of our old truckle-cart! and

what is all this scare above?"

"Now, daddy, dear, don't," said Katy, coaxingly drawing her head carefully

away from the great, awkward fingers that threatened harm to her carefully built edifice. "We are going to have our tin-types taken, Harry and I, and so I dressed my hair, and you must not pull it down, there is a dear.” "Why, it is all strapped up, child. One could unharness a horse as easily as your head."

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Strap! O papa! that is a fillet."

Classical, papa," said Harry.

things when you were young?"

"Did not the old Latin ladies wear such

And I am not so sure I

"To the best of my knowledge and belief never. want an old Latin lady about the house. Madam Octavia Sulpicia Copernica, shall I trouble you to return to Latium, and bring my little Katy once more!"

"O, now, dear little papa! do not be stupid and teasing, when I am going to have my tin-type taken, and must be magnificent. Now, if you will only be good, you shall have your choice of them all."

And papa, having been brought up in a long course of such goodness, let the "scare" and "truckle-cart wheel" alone, and listened to the tale of the tin-types. Just nothing at all, they said: eighteen for a quarter of a dollar, which they were going to pay for out of their own income of ten cents a week. 'Everybody has them, papa, and we give them all away. Jenny Hand had her eighteen Thursday, and only one left Friday night. You see, papa, you have them taken, nine at a sitting, and then little albums to save them up in."

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"And you buy an album, too, out of your ten cents a week?"

"O, no," said Harry, "because an album costs so much we should be poor all the time, just beggars, to go into such an expense."

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We wait, papa," said Katy, demurely,

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thinking something may turn up. Perhaps, when we get all our pictures together, somebody will look at them, somebody who has plenty of money, and will say, 'My dears,> these are very pretty, and you must have a book apiece to put them in, and

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"Say two, while you are about it," whispered Harry very audibly.

"Here are two dollars apiece, dear children

-

"No," growled Harry again; "you will upset the basket. A dollar apiece, two for both."

"A dollar apiece, two for both, dear children, to buy each of you a beautiful tin-type album, with red covers and gilt edges.' I should not wonder, papa, if that somebody were a handsome man, with dear old brown eyes, and a lovely brown beard, a little gray."

"And eating buckwheat cakes this very minute," added Harry.

"With his hair a little curly, Harry."

“And a little bald on the top of his head, Katy."

"Where his dear little daughter, that he loves so much, combs his hair for him when he is tired, and asks nothing in return, Harry."

"And keeps pouring on the syrup, and does not hear a word we are saying, Katy."

"And will not give us any tin-type albums, and break our hearts, Harry." Just here came the laugh they were planning for, and of course, with it, out came the money they were plotting for; and so breakfast was finished merrily, and papa was allowed to read his newspaper with a pleasant sense of having behaved very properly, and received the approbation of his judicious children.

Away to the photographer's they went, Katy carrying her head a little. stiffly in her new "harness," but quite happy in her stateliness. As they turned into the village, they saw a crowd gathered on the sidewalk, looking up earnestly at something in the great tree. "A squirrel," suggested Harry; but Kate thought likely it was some new kind of bird. No, it was something fluttering, larger than a squirrel or a bird, "as big as a peacock and his tail," said Harry.

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Why, it is a veil!" exclaimed Katy. "It is some one's veil blown off, and flying up and caught on the branch away up. It will never come down again. She has lost her veil."

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Perhaps the same breeze that stole it will repent and bring - why, there is a boy up in the tree, now, after it!"

So there was surely. High, high up, it seemed to Katy, his light clothes appeared among the leaves. "Oh! I should think he would be afraid, and he is crawling out farther along the limb."

"Afraid!" said Harry, rather contemptuously. "Why, there is nothing to be afraid of. I have climbed trees twice as high as that, and twice as fast, too. I wish I was up there, -I would show them how to do it. This

is what I call slow."

"I am sure I would not take so much trouble for a veil," murmured Kate, half to herself.

"Not for a veil; but I would for Miss Eliza."

"O, is it hers?"

"Yes. I heard a boy say so," for Harry had been working in and out among the crowd. "And it is Jack Crowley up there, and he would just kill himself for Miss Eliza any time."

Jack had evidently climbed as far out along the branch as he dared to go, and was yet not within reach of the veil. He had a stick in one hand, and while holding on to the branch above him with the other, he tried with his stick to loosen the veil from the twig on which it was caught. But the stick was too short, and he called to those below to pass him another. This was easily done by two or three boys who were in the tree below him; but Miss Eliza was much more anxious about Jack than about her veil, and begged him not to trouble himself.

"No trouble at all, ma'am," called down Jack, cheerily. "I like the fun. I see a bird's nest, too."

"Lud, ma'am,” said a stout fellow who was watching him, "young chaps like him, they don't mind climbing trees no more 'n you do stepping into your

carriage. It's only a lark, ma'am, let alone a lady's veil, and her you, begging pardon."

"Pshaw, yes," said another, reassuringly. "That boy has climbed more trees, I'll be bound, after birds' eggs than-well, I wish I had as many dollars as he has climbed trees."

But here, notwithstanding Jack's experience, a sad thing happened. Whether undue excitement made him careless, or whatever it may have been, certain it is that in reaching forward he loosed the veil and also lost his balance. The veil floated down and floated out, and then down again, as majestic as you please; but no one saw it, for down came poor Jack, too, not majestic at all, not floating, but crashing, crashing through the twigs, bumping against the branches, and there he lay in a heap on the ground, torn, bleeding, senseless. Poor, poor little Jack Crowley!

Some screamed, one or two almost fainted. As for Harry, he caught Kate's hand, and they ran off as fast as they could out of sight and sound, till they found themselves, without knowing how, on Miss Eliza's door-step. There they sat down, all pale and trembling, and looked at each other's white face, and then Katy began to cry. "To be all killed and dead and bounced up so in a minute," sobbed Katy.

"O Katy! don't cry," said Harry, with a choking voice, "perhaps he is not dead."

"And he such a good boy, and showed us where the high-bush blackberries were last summer, - don't you remember?"

"And helped you fill your pail after you spilled them crossing the brook, and had to go and get the cows, too."

"O, I shall never eat any more blackberries as long as I live, for grief and sorrow, or if I do I shall always think of poor Jack tumbling down dead off a tree."

And so they went on recounting Jack's virtues and their own sorrows and future proceedings, till Miss Eliza appeared and informed them that Jack was not in the least dead, though a good deal bruised and stunned. tunately he broke his arm," said Miss Eliza.

"Fortunately?" echoed the children, in surprise.

"For

"Yes; because if his arm had not received the shock, and so broken the fall, the fall might have broken his neck."

"Just as we thought it did," said Katy. "O dear little Jack! Miss Eliza, do you think we might go and see him, and make him happy a little, all bruised."

"No, dear, the doctor is there,” at which Katy grew pale again,—“and for the present he is to be kept as quiet as possible. After a few days he will be very glad to see you, and I dare say you can cheer him up a good deal."

"Come Harry," said Katy, "let us go home. I do not feel like tin-types any more, and poor Jack Crowley with his arm broken."

"What I shall do, Katy, I shall go home and find something to give him as soon as ever he gets well."

"I wonder how soon do people get well of broken arms." "Or I can give him something that does not want arms, read, or something."

something to

Let us go and have

"O, I tell you, Harry! now this is just the thing! our tin-types taken, and buy him an album, and put everybody's tin-type in it, and give it to him. Because he is poor, and never will have any!" “Now, Katy, that is bright. But if I buy his album, then you will have one, and I shall not."

"You may put all your pictures in mine."

"O, but it is not fun to have somebody else's."

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"Well, do see. You give him your album, and I will give him my money to buy whatever he likes with. Then we shall be even."

And if they were happy before in going to the photographer's, they were ten times happier in turning back now, so happy that they could hardly keep their faces still long enough to be photographed. Katy was sure she looked like a fright, and Harry's hair had dropped down over his forehead, notwithstanding the great pains he had taken to plaster it up in place. But there they were, thirty-six of them in all, to take or to leave; and then they selected the daintiest little album they could find, and filled it at home with the dainty little pictures which they prized so highly; and each time they unfolded one from its tissue-paper wrapper, they stopped to gaze at it, and talk about it, so that it was a good forenoon's work to get the little album ready; and when it was ready, they turned it over and over again, till Harry declared they should get the good all out of it before ever Jack got hold of it. "And O," cried Katy of a sudden, "I have thought such a nice thing again. My dollar, you know; let us get papa to change it into ten-cent pieces, and lay them between the leaves, so he will keep finding them and finding them."

"Just as you do in a dream, and that will spin it out ever so much longer than to find just one dollar all in a heap. O, yes!"

Of course papa was glad to accommodate them; and when it was thought proper to make their visit, Chryssa gave them a little basket containing a tiny loaf of frosted cake, and a glass of jelly; and papa added two oranges, and Sally contributed a cake of maple-sugar and the very handsomest of her carnation pinks; and altogether Harry thought in his secret heart that Jack was a rather lucky fellow to have broken his arm.

They were a little silent and afraid as they approached Jack's house, fearing the hush and twilight and strangeness of illness. But when they went in, there was no bed and no twilight, but Jack lying on the faded old lounge in the bright sunshine, with the cat perched and purring on his feet, as comfortable as could be. To be sure his arm was broken and tied up in a sling, which is not comfortable, and to be sure he was black and blue and stiff and sore, and felt, he said, as if he had been jounced in a bag of stones; but he talked as gayly and laughed as merrily as ever, and when Harry and Katy drew up their chairs and sat down by him, and held up the basket, how his eyes sparkled! "Not much of anything," said Katy demurely, —" only a