way home I kept thinking what it could be. A new doll,
perhaps, that grandmamma was to send for my birth-day present; but then
my birth-day did not come for weeks yet. A work-box lined with
rose-pink, perhaps; but that was to arrive when my sampler was
finished--and oh, what a large piece was still to be sewed. I tired
myself trying to think, and at last gave it up in despair.

"Of all the things I had thought of, it never came into my head to expect
a new baby-sister; but so it was. When I entered the parlour, and was
rushing up to fling myself into my mother's arms, what was my surprise
to find a lovely baby--the very thing I had been wishing for--yes,
actually a baby-sister.

[Illustration: MY BABY-SISTER.]

"I don't think I was ever so happy in my life as at that moment, when I
was allowed to take the baby in my lap and examine her tiny fingers and
toes; and when she smiled in my face, and seemed to be pleased with her
big sister, I actually cried, I was so happy. While I was sitting
holding baby in this way, my father returned home with Willie, my
brother, and such fun and laughing we had, to be sure! But I must own I
did feel a little vexed when papa one day said to me, a few weeks after
I had returned home, 'Well, Lily, now that you have got such a fat baby
sister to carry about, you will have to lay aside your dolls.'

"I was very sorry, for I loved my dolls exceedingly; they had been my
dear companions and friends for so long. But I knew papa scarcely
approved of me playing so much with them, and fancied I might be more
usefully employed. I took out my last new doll, Eva, for a walk that
afternoon, feeling somehow that she must be laid away in a drawer till
baby grew up, when she should have her to be her faithful companion.
Stepping out at the side gate into the lane to look for Willie, who had
gone to the post, I found an old woman sitting down to rest. After
speaking to her for a minute or two, I discovered, to my great delight,
that she was the mother of Will Dampier, and the grandmother of Polly.
She had just come from the Bluff Crag that very day, where she had been
to see her son; and she told me that the last thing she saw, in looking
back from the bank above, before turning into the main road, was her son
with his crab-basket on his back, and Master Patrick Berkley alongside
of him.

"'Oh, I am so glad to hear this,' I replied; 'that shows Patrick's leg
must be quite well and strong again. And how