ought so, my Nellie;
To make your play sweet
You must work, and be useful
To those whom you meet.
The idle are never
So happy as they
Who work for themselves
Or for others each day."

DOLLY AND I.

[Illustration: Mrs. Green took the doll.--Page 146.]

DOLLY AND I.

I.

Do you know what envy means? I hope you have never felt it, for it
is a very wicked feeling. It is being sorry when another has any
good thing. Perhaps you will know better what the word means when
you have read my story; and I hope it will help you to keep the
feeling away from your own heart.

Not far from Mr. Lee's house, in Riverdale, lived a man by the name
of Green. He was the agent of one of the factories in the village.
Mr. Green had two little girls and three sons. The boys have
nothing to do with my story, and for that reason I shall not say a
great deal about them.

Katy, Mr. Green's older daughter, was ten years old. She was a
pretty good girl, but she did not like to have others get good
things, when she did not have any herself. If any person gave one
of her brothers an apple, or an orange, she seemed to think she
ought to have it.

When she was a baby, she used to cry for everything she saw, and
would give her parents no peace till they gave it to her. I am
sorry to say they were sometimes very weak on this point, and gave
her things which she ought not to have had, just to quiet her.

Her father and mother hoped, when she grew older, she would not
want everything that belonged to her brothers. If Charles had a
plaything, Katy wanted it, and would cry till she got it. Very
often, just to make her stop crying, her mother made poor Charley
give up the thing.

But as Katy grew older, she seemed to want everything that others
had just as much as ever. She was now ten years old, and still she
did not like to see others have anything which she could not have.
It is true she did not always say so, but she felt it just as much,
and was very apt to be cross and sullen towards those whom she
envied.

Nellie Green was not at all like her sister. She was only eight
years old, but there was not a bit of envy in her. She would give a
part, and often the whole, of her apples, oranges, candy, and
playthings to her sister, and to her brothers. She liked to see
them happy, and when Charley ate an apple, it tasted just as good
to her as though she were eating it herself.

She was not sel