ey thought would make her
happy. The first pet Minnie had was a beautiful tortoise-shell kitten,
which she took in her baby arms and hugged tightly to her bosom. After a
time, her father, seeing how much comfort she took with kitty, bought
her a spaniel. He already had a large Newfoundland dog; but Mrs. Lee
was unwilling to have him come into the house, saying that in summer he
drew the flies, and in winter he dirtied her hearth rugs. So Leo, as the
great dog was called, was condemned to the barn, while Tiney could rove
through the parlors and chambers whenever he pleased.

In Minnie's seventh year, her father bought her a Shetland pony and a
lamb, which he told her was called a South Down--a rare and valuable
breed. The little girl now thought her hands quite full; but only the
next Christmas, when her uncle came home from sea, he told her he had
brought an addition to her pets; and true enough, when his luggage came
from town, there was a bag containing a real, live monkey, named Jacko.

These, with the silver-gray parrot, which had been in the family for
years, gave Minnie employment from morning till night.

You will wonder, perhaps, that one child should have so many pets; and,
indeed, the parrot belonged to her mother; but when I tell you that,
though her parents had had six children, she was the only one remaining
to them, and that in her infancy she was very sickly, you will not
wonder so much. The doctor said that their only hope of bringing her up
was to keep her in the open air as much as possible.

"Let her have a run with Leo," he used to say; or, "Get her a horse, and
teach her to ride. That will do her more good than medicine."

When her father came home from town, if he did not see his little
daughter on the lawn, playing with Fidelle, the cat, and Tiney, the dog,
he was almost sure to find her in the shed where Jacko's cage was kept,
with Miss Poll perching on her shoulder.

When visitors called and asked to see her, her mother would laugh, as
she answered, "I'm sure I don't know where the child is, she has so many
pets."

Minnie was not allowed to study much in books; indeed, she scarcely knew
how to read at all; yet she was not an ignorant child, for her father
and mother took great pains to teach her. She knew the names of all the
different trees on her father's place, and of all the flowers in her
mother's garden; but her favorite study was the natural history of
beasts and birds; and nothing