r see a donkey play a lute?" said he. "That's an old saw,"
he added.

"I never saw a donkey before," said Buddie.

"You haven't traveled much," said the other. "The world is full of
them."

"This is the farthest I've ever been from home," confessed Buddie,
feeling very insignificant indeed.

"And how far may that be?"

Buddie couldn't tell exactly.

"But it can't be a great way," she said. "I live in the log house by the
lake."

"Pooh!" said the Donkey. "That's no distance at all." Buddie shrank
another inch or two. "I'm a great traveler myself. All donkeys travel
that can. If a donkey travels, you know, he _may_ come home a horse; and
to become a horse is, of course, the ambition of every donkey!"

"Is it?" was all Buddie could think of to remark. What could she say
that would interest a globe-trotter?

"Perhaps you have an old saw you'd like reset," suggested the Donkey,
still thrumming the lute-strings.

Buddie thought a moment.

"There's an old saw hanging up in our woodshed," she began, but got no
farther.

"Hee-haw! hee-haw!" laughed the Donkey. "Thistles and cactus, but that's
rich!" And he hee-hawed until the tears ran down his nose. Poor Buddie,
who knew she was being laughed at but didn't know why, began to feel
very much like crying and wished she might run away.

"Excuse these tears," the Donkey said at last, recovering his family
gravity. "Didn't you ever hear the saying, A burnt child dreads the
fire?"

Buddie nodded, and plucked up her spirits.

"Well, that's an old saw. And you must have heard that other very old
saw, No use crying over spilt milk."

Another nod from Buddie.

"Here's my setting of that," said the Donkey; and after a few
introductory chords, he sang:

"'Oh, why do you cry, my pretty little maid,
With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho?'
'I've spilled my milk, kind sir,' she said,
And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'

'No use to cry, my pretty little maid,
With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho.'
'But what shall I do, kind sir?' she said,
And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'

'Why, dry your eyes, my pretty little maid,
With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho.'
'Oh, thank you, thank you, sir,' she said,
And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'"

"How do you like my voice?" asked the Donkey, in a tone that said very
plainly: "If you don't like it you're no judge of singing."

Buddie did not at once reply. A professional critic would h