Tattine | Page 8

you cool it, it grows brittle like "taffy," and then good-bye to maple-wax for that kettleful. So Rudolph, every half-minute, kept dripping little streams of the boiling sugar from the spoon upon the piece of ice, and Tattine and Mabel kept testing it with their fingers and tongues, until both at last exclaimed in one and the same breatlg, "It's done! it's done! Lift it off the fire quickly; it's just right." Just right means when the sugar hardens in a few seconds, or in a little more than half a minute, into a delicious consistency like--well, just like maple-wax, for there is nothing else in the world that I know of with which to compare it. Then the children seated themselves around the great cake of ice, and Rudolph, with the kettle on the ground beside him, tipped against a log of wood at just the right angle, continued to be master of ceremonies, and dipped spoonful after spoonful of the syrup, and let it trickle over the ice in queer fantastic shapes or in little, tbin round discs like griddle-cakes. The children ate and ate, and fortunately it seems for some reason, to be the most harmless sweet that can be indulged in by little people.
"Well, I've had enough," remarked Rudolph at the expiration of say a quarter of an hour, "but isn't it wonderful that anything so delicious can just trickle out of a tree?" his unmannerly little tongue the while making the circuit of his lips in search of any lingering traces of sweetness.
"Trickle out of a tree!" exclaimed astonished Tattine.
"Why, yes, don't you know that's the way they make maple sugar? In the spring, about April, when the sap begins to run up into the maple-trees, and often while the snow is still on the ground, they what they call tap the tree; they drive a sort of little spout right into the tree and soon the sap begins to ooze out and drop into buckets that are placed to catch it. Afterwards they boil it down in huge kettles made for the purpose. They call it sugaring off, and it must be great fun."
"Not half so much fun, I should think, as sugaring down," laughed Mabel, with her right hand placed significantly where stomachs are supposed to be.
"And now I am going to run up to the house," explained Tattine, getting stiffly up from a rather cramped position, "for three or four plates, and Kudolph, you break off some pieces of ice the right size for them, and we will make a little plateful from what is left for each one up at the house, else I should say we were three little greedies. And Mabel, while I am gone you commence to clear up."
"Well, you are rather cool, Tattine," said Mabel, but she obediently set to work to gather things together.
As you and I cannot be a bit of help in that direction, and have many of a clearing-up of our own to do, I propose that we lose not a minute in running away from that little camp, particularly as we have not had so much as a taste of the delicious wax they've been making.

CHAPTER III
. A SET OF SETTERS
It was a great bird-year at Oakdene. Never had there been so many. The same dear old Phoebe-birds were back, building under the eaves of both the front and back piazzas. The robins, as usual, were everywhere. The Maryland yellow-throats were nesting in great numbers in the young growth of woods on the hill of the ravine, and ringing out their hammer-like note in the merriest manner; a note that no one understood until Dr. Van Dyke told us, in his beautiful little poem, that it is "witchery, witchery, witchery," and now we wonder that we could have been so stupid as not to have discovered it was exactly that, long ago. But the glory of the summer were the orioles and the scarlet tanagers; the orioles with their marvellous notes, and the tanagers in their scarlet golfing coats glinting here and there in the sunshine. Nests everywhere, and Tattine on one long voyage of discovery, until she knew where at least twenty little bird families were going to crack-shell their way into life. But there was one little family of whose whereabouts she knew nothing, nor anyone else for that matter, until "Hark, what was that?"--Mabel and Rudolph and Tattine were running across the end of the porch, and it was Rudolph who brought them to a standstill.
"It's puppies under the piazza, that's what it is," declared Tattine; "where ever did they come from, and how ever do you suppose they got there?"
"I think it's a good deal more important to know how you'll ever get them out," answered Rudolph, who