p the
maple trees.

Every minute after that was a busy one. The nights were crisp with
frost, and the days were full of spring sunshine. For hours and hours
each day Roy trudged through the snow wearing on his shoulders the yoke
which had a pail hanging from either end, and after each trip into the
woods he would turn two brimming pails of sap into the big kettle
boiling over the fire.

[Illustration: After each trip into the woods Roy would turn two
brimming pails of sap into the big kettle.]

Sometimes his legs ached, and he got tired tramping through the snow,
and one pair of mittens grew quite useless for the holes worn in them.
But he did not give up one bit of his share of the work.

For a whole week the sap ran freely, and then came the time for Roy to
leave the men and go home.

"I'm going to miss you a whole lot!" declared Uncle Henry.

Roy laughed happily. He was going down the mountain on the ox team which
was piled high with barrels of rich brown syrup.

"I'd like to stay!" he said. "I've learned about what you said before I
came: that it's more real fun doing hard things than 'tis to play at
easy ones!"

--_Written for Dew Drops by Ruby Holmes Martyn._

NEIGHBORS.

Bobby made the snow man. He had made snow men in the country, and he
knew how. He always made them by the gate, next to the big syringa bush.
He used to cut a stick from a tree for the snow man to hold, and he
generally placed a long chicken feather in its cap.

But in a city yard that was not even all your own yard, it was
different. Recently Bobby's father had come into town to live.

In the same street lived Joey Rodman, who was about Bobby's age. The
afternoon that Bobby made the snow man Joey kept throwing stones. Bobby
tried not to mind. There was lots of snow in the yard, and he made the
snow man unusually large. The other children helped him, but Joey kept
calling out and throwing things, and at last he knocked off the head of
the snow man just as Bobby had put in two bits of coal for the eyes.

Bobby could not stand that. He ran after Joey, and Joey dodged and
began to call him names. Joey's sister, Sadie, who cared for the six
children, heard the noise in the yard below.

"Do you think it's your yard?" she called out to Bobby. "It is just as
much Joey's yard as it is yours!"

Then Bobby's mother opened her window. "Come in, Bobby!" she said; and
when Bobby left the snow man and climbed upstairs, she said, "Son