," said the chimney sweep; "he can certainly be
riveted. Do not grieve so! If they cement his back and put a rivet
through his neck, he will be just as good as new, and will be able to
say as many disagreeable things to us as ever."

"Do you really think so?" asked she. Then they climbed again up to the
place where they had stood before.

"How far we have been," observed the chimney sweep, "and since we have
got no farther than this, we might have saved ourselves all the
trouble."

"I wish grandfather were mended," said the shepherdess; "I wonder if it
will cost very much."

Mended he was. The family had his back cemented and his neck riveted, so
that he was as good as new, only he could not nod.

"You have become proud since you were broken to shivers," observed the
crooked-legged field-marshal-major-general-corporal-sergeant, "but I
must say, for my part, I don't see much to be proud of. Am I to have
her, or am I not? Just answer me that."

The chimney sweep and the shepherdess looked most piteously at the old
mandarin. They were so afraid that he would nod his head. But he could
not, and it would have been beneath his dignity to have confessed to
having a rivet in his neck. So the young porcelain people always
remained together, and they blessed the grandfather's rivet and loved
each other till they were broken in pieces.

[Illustration]

THE DROP OF WATER

YOU know, surely, what the microscope is--that wonderful little glass
which makes everything appear a hundred times larger than it really is.

If you look through a microscope at a single drop of ditch water, you
will see a thousand odd-looking creatures, such as you never could
imagine dwelled in water. They do not look unlike a whole plateful of
shrimps, all jumping and crowding upon each other. So fierce are these
little creatures that they will tear off each other's arms and legs
without the least mercy, and yet after their fashion they look merry and
happy.

Now there was once an old man, whom his neighbors called Cribbley
Crabbley--a curious name, to be sure, which meant something like
"creep-and-crawl." He always liked to make the most of everything, and
when he could not manage it in the ordinary way, he tried magic.

One day he sat looking through his microscope at a drop of water that
had been brought from a neighboring ditch. What a scene of scrambling
and swarming it was, to be sure! All the thousands of little imps in the