Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BLUEBELL WAS AT THE DOUR. CHAPTER III. JEANIE AND EFFIE AND THEIE " CHUM." " All! what would the world be to us If the children were no more ? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before." —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Doctor Allan lived in a little, red-brick, suburban- looking, detached villa at the end of a row of cottages and artisans' dwellings of the modern type, on the outskirts of the tiny, sleepy, country town of Bum- bleton. It was not a pretty villa by any means. It was divided from the road by a railing which had two gates, a large one and a small one, that were painted green, and by a narrow strip of garden and a miniature gravel path. There was a small, painted porchover the principal entrance, and the rooms on the ground floor had bay windows. Behind the house was a long piece of ground enclosed by a high and hideous black fence. This the doctor's children proudly spoke of as "the garden," and they had planted a great many flowers in it, and tended them each day with the greatest care. There were vegetables in "the garden" too, peas, and cauliflowers, and lettuces, and small spring onions and radishes, all things in season. And at the further end was a long line, from which fluttered sundry snowy-white garments, washing " done at home." There was also a pigeon-house and some rabbit-hutches, for in this enchanted piece of ground Jeanie and Effle Allan thought there must be room for everything, and they certainly made the most of a very limited space. In their opinion there was not and never had been such a dear little place as Rose Villa, and to them it was such a happy home as contented and well brought-up children alone can know. Jeanie and Effle were the doctor's twin daughters, and they had not long since celebrated t...