might make a bag, Gracie--"

"Seems to me aunt Louise lets you do everything; I shouldn't want you
to spoil that ribbon."

"They shan't bother my little Topknot," said Horace, with a sweep of
his thumb. "She is going to have all my clothes to make bags of, when
she grows up."

Flyaway, who knew she had a good right to the ribbon, pressed her
eyelids together slowly.

"If I's Gracie," said she, severely, "I'd make aprons; if I's mamma
I'd sew dresses; if I's Flywer, I'd do just's I want to."

And then she went on sewing; without any thimble.

"Girls, have you guessed yet why a wheelbarrow is like a potato?"

"No, Horace; why is it?"

"O, I was in hopes you could tell. I don't know, I am sure. It is as
much as I can do to make up a conundrum, without finding out the
answer."

The children laughed at this, but none of them so loud as Flyaway,
who thought her brother the wisest, wittiest, and noblest specimen of
boyhood that ever lived.

"How our needles do fly!" said Dotty, merrily.

She was a neat and swift little seamstress, even superior to Prudy.

"See," said Flyaway to Horace; "I work faster 'n my mamma, 'cause she's
got a big dress to work on: of course she can't sew so quick as I can
on a little bag."

"Prudy can sew better and faster than I can," said Dotty, with a
sudden gush of humility.

"Why, Dotty Dimple, I don't think so," returned Prudy, quite
surprised.

"Neither do I," said aunt Maria; "I am afraid our little Dotty is
hardly sincere."

Dotty's head drooped a little. "I know it, auntie; I do sew the
nicest; but I was afraid it wouldn't be polite if I told it just as it
was, and Prudy so good to me, too."

"If she is good, is that any reason why you should tell her a wrong
story?" remarked the plain-spoken Susy, giving a twitch to her
tatting-thread.

"Children," said Mrs. Clifford, laughing, "do you remember those
hideous green goggles I wore a year ago?"

"O, yes 'm," replied Grace; "they made your eyes stick out so! Why,
you looked like a frog, ma', more than anything else."

"Well, a certain lady of my acquaintance was so polite as to tell me
my goggles were very becoming."

"O, ma, who could it have been?"

"I prefer not to give you her name. I appreciated her kind wish to
please me, but I could not think her sincere."

"O, Susy," said Grace, "if you could have seen those goggles! A little
basket for each eye, made of green wire, like a fly cover! Ma, did you
ever believ