e pleasure she prized much. Following in the train of the
ambitious Brooklet had been a score of fishes, which, frightened by the
leap upon the jagged rocks, had staid behind with the timid wanderer,
until they became part of her family in the new retreat. Overlooking,
and enjoying the gambols of these fish, the discontented Brooklet often
amused herself. Observing how when the sun came slanting through the
sides of the foliage about, they would dart out from their hiding-places
in the old dead leaves at the feet of the Brooklet, and so jump up to
greet the warming rays: or how, when a fly fell down from the
overhanging boughs, and tried to swim away, they would jump to nab a bit
of lunch, scrabbling and tugging as they went; or how, when the largest
fish of all threw off his dignity, and played with them at hide and seek
under the foot-deep bottom of mud, they would all shoot about her
life-blood drops without regard to the angles of pain their fins would
leave behind!

Thus the summer-time came on, and was passing by, when one day the
Brooklet felt a shadow upon her, and looked up to see the cause--when
high upon the rocks above, there stood a bright-eyed boy, with curling
locks that blew about in golden beauty with the breeze. In his hand he
held a little stick, which he turned over from time to time, and would
take up and then lay it down, as if preparing for something wonderful.
The curiosity of the Brooklet was aroused to know what he could mean,
when presently she saw him sit upon the rock, and from the stick drop
down upon her face a worm, which when the fishes saw they darted out to
eat.

"It is a beautiful boy; and a kind boy," said the artless Brook unto
herself; "and he has come to feed the little fishes with a worm. I have
not seen one since I left my little meadow on that rainy day. How like
the lovely face I used to see, is his which now looks down."

While thus the Brook was soliloquizing, a fish more cunning than the
rest, had seized the worm within his mouth, and was swimming away to his
favorite hole by an old willow stump to there complete a meal. He was
just entering it, when the Brook saw him suddenly flash from her
embrace, floundering and pulling as he went up, up through the air, unto
the mossy bank above the rock from which fell the shadow of the boy. And
now the Brook, more curious than ever, saw the face so like the
laborer's daughter overspread with smiles as the tiny hands grasped the
fi