he evening before, and early the next
morning she was lying in a little rumpled-up heap in a corner, dead!
Poor Coo-coo--they thought she died of old age. I can't help wondering
where birds go to when they die--they are so innocent!

Still they are very heartless. That very morning beside his poor little
dead wife, Fritz was pecking away at his seeds and singing as if nothing
were the matter. So we have not troubled to get a new companion for him,
and when he dies I don't much think I shall care to keep any more pet
birds. He is very alive at present however. He really sings so very
loudly sometimes that we are obliged to cover him up with a dark cloth
to pretend it is night.

I hear him carrolling away now as brilliantly as possible!

HARRY'S REWARD

[Illustration: HARRY'S REWARD.

By Mrs. Molesworth.]

"I hate the sea, I hate bathing, and I don't want to learn to swim.
What's the use of learning to swim? I'm not going to be a sailor. I
don't like ships, and I don't want ever to go in one, and I just wish,
oh, I do wish papa hadn't come here!"

"Harry! how can you?" said his sister Dora. "Papa who is so kind, and
when we have all been looking forward so to his coming."

"I know--that's the worst of it," said Harry. "I've been looking forward
as much as any one, and now it's all spoilt by his saying I must learn
to swim."

"I only wish _I_ could learn!" sighed Dora. She was two years older than
Harry, but she had lately had a bad fever. The family had come to the
seaside to give her change of air, but not for some weeks yet, if at
all this summer, was poor Dora to be allowed to bathe. And she loved the
sea, and bathing, and boating, and everything to do with the sea. She
was like her father, who, though not a sailor, had travelled much and
far, both by land and water; whereas Harry "took after," as the country
people say, his mother, who had lived in her youth in a warm climate,
and shivered at every breath of cold or even fresh air. It did not
matter so much for a delicate lady to be afraid of the wind and the sea,
but it was a great pity for a healthy boy to be fanciful or timid; and
Harry's mother herself was very anxious that he should become more
manly. She was very disappointed that she could not get him to bathe
when they came to the seaside, but it was no use, and she and nurse and
Dora all agreed that the only thing to do was to "wait till Papa came."

Papa had come now, and Harry had had hi