e in blue is
Rachel, and the littlest is named Kathleen. Isn't she pretty? They're
the sweetest little things, oh, I shall miss them so. I shan't ever have
such good times again as I've had with them." Her voice faltered; a lump
came in her throat. To hide it she slipped away, and went across the
church to where the little ones sat.

"That's a dear child of yours," said the good Bishop, looking after her.
"I guess she'll _do_ wherever she goes."

And I think Mary will.

[Illustration]

LADY BIRD.

"NOW, Pocahontas Maria, sit still and don't disturb the little ones.
Imogene, that lesson must be learned before I come back, you know. Now,
dear, that was very, very naughty. When Mamma tells you to do things you
mustn't pout and poke Stella with your foot in that way. It isn't nice
at all. Stella is younger than you, and you ought to set her samples, as
Nursey says. Look at Ning Po Ganges, how good she is, and how she minds
all I say, and yet she's the littlest child I've got."

If anybody had been walking in Madam Bird's old-fashioned garden that
morning, and had heard these wise words coming from the other side of
the rose thicket, he would certainly have supposed that some old dame
with a school was hidden away there, or at the least an anxious Mamma
with a family of unruly children. But if this somebody had gone into the
thicket, bobbing his head to avoid the prickly, wreath-like branches, he
would have found on the other side only one person, little Lota Bird,
playing all alone with her dolls. "Lady Bird" Nursey called Lota,
because when, six years before, Papa fetched her home from China, she
wore a speckled frock of orange-red and black, very much the color of
those other tiny frocks in which the real lady-birds fly about in
summer-time. The speckled frock was outgrown long ago, but the name
still clung to Lota, and every one called her by it except Grandmamma,
who said "Charlotte," sighing as she spoke, and Papa, whose letters
always began, "My darling little Lota." Papa had been away so long now
that Lota would quite have forgotten him had it not been for these
letters which came regularly every month. The paper on which they were
written had an odd, pleasant smell. Nurse said it was the smell of
sandal-wood. Sometimes there were things inside for Lota, bird's
feathers of gay colors, Chinese puzzles of carved ivory, or small
pictures painted on rice paper. Lota liked these things very much. It
was li