and went home like a
lonely owl with his face to the moon and the sky.

A BORROWED BROWNIE.

"I can't imagine," said the Rector, walking into the drawing-room the
following afternoon; "I can't imagine where Tiny is. I want her to
drive to the other end of the parish with me."

"There she comes," said his wife, looking out of the window, "by the
garden-gate, with a great basket; what has she been after?"

The Rector went out to discover, and met his daughter looking decidedly
earthy, and seemingly much exhausted by the weight of a basketful of
groundsel plants.

"Where have you been?" said he.

"In the Doctor's garden," said Tiny triumphantly; "and look what I have
done! I've weeded his sweet-peas, and brought away the groundsel; so
when he gets home to-night he'll think a Brownie has been in the
garden, for Mrs. Pickles has promised not to tell him."

"But look here!" said the Rector, affecting a great appearance of
severity, "you're my Brownie, not his. Supposing Tommy Trout had gone
and weeded Farmer Swede's garden, and brought back his weeds to go to
seed on the Tailor's flower-beds, how do you think he would have liked
it?"

Tiny looked rather crestfallen. When one has fairly carried through a
splendid benevolence of this kind, it is trying to find oneself in the
wrong. She crept up to the Rector, however, and put her golden head
upon his arm.

"But, Father dear," she pleaded, "I didn't mean not to be your Brownie;
only, you know, you had got five left at home, and it was only for a
short time, and the Doctor hasn't any Brownie at all. Don't you pity
him?"

And the Rector, who was old enough to remember that grave-stone story
we wot of, hugged his Brownie in his arms, and answered,

"My Darling, I do pity him!"

THE LAND OF LOST TOYS.

AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE NURSERY.

It was certainly an aggravated offence. It is generally understood in
families that "boys will be boys," but there is a limit to the
forbearance implied in the extenuating axiom. Master Sam was condemned
to the back nursery for the rest of the day.

He always had had the knack of breaking his own toys,--he not
unfrequently broke other people's; but accidents will happen, and his
twin-sister and factotum, Dot, was long-suffering.

Dot was fat, resolute, hasty, and devotedly unselfish. When Sam scalped
her new doll, and fastened the glossy black curls to a wigwam
improvised with the curtains of the four-post bed in the bes