oon fast asleep; but the next time
they gave a frolic the very first thing they did was to invite all the
Fireflies, and not one did they forget.

SALLIE HICKS'S FOREFINGER

[Illustration: Sallie Hicks's Forefinger]

Sallie Hicks was a little girl who was good most of the time, but she
had one bad habit, and that was caused by her forefinger on her right
hand.

Sallie's right-hand forefinger would get into things it should not, and
it caused Sallie's mother a great deal of trouble, and most of Sallie's
punishments were on account of that unruly right-hand-forefinger.

One day Sallie's mother set a dish of hot jelly on the kitchen table to
cool. She told Sallie it was hot and she must not touch it.

But no sooner was her mother out of the kitchen and the cook's head was
turned another way than Sallie Hicks forgot all about her mother's
warning, and the naughty right-hand forefinger went right into the hot
jelly.

Oh, how Sallie screamed with pain! And she forgot all about putting
the forefinger in her mouth to taste the jelly, it burned her so.

The big tears ran right down Sallie's pretty pink cheeks, and her
mother and grandmother, and cook, too, came running to see what was the
matter.

The little forefinger told the story, and it had to be wrapped in some
cooling salve and a soft piece of linen.

"I told you that some day you would get that finger burned," said her
mother, "and now because you disobeyed me you must sit in the big chair
in the hall until lunch time and not speak to anyone. I want you to
think about that naughty finger."

Sallie's grandmother passed her in the hall and leaned over and kissed
her. "I am sorry that grandmother's little girl was so naughty," she
said. "Good little girls mind their mothers and they don't get burnt
fingers."

Sallie watched her grandmother go upstairs and then Sallie looked at
the picture hanging on the wall of her great-grandmother.

"I wonder if Grandmother Great ever had to punish grandmother," thought
Sallie. "I wonder if grandmothers were always very good little girls?"

Sallie looked at her Grandfather Great, too, and wondered how it was
that, though the Greats were the father and mother of her own dear
grandmother, they had nice black hair, all smooth and shiny, while her
grandmother and grandfather, too, had white hair.

Sallie looked at the forefinger all wrapped about with the white cloth,
and she thought how dreadful it would be to