ell you not, your little dog Toto will come and eat
up your ears." And with these terrible words she walks away.

The young culprit, sitting quite still under her brilliant canopy, looks
about her and gazes at earth and sky. It is a big world she sees, big
enough and beautiful enough to amuse a little girl for some while.
But her hydrangea blossom is more interesting than all the rest put
together. She thinks to herself: "It is a flower; it must smell good?"
And she puts her nose to the pretty pink and blue ball; she sniffs, but
she cannot smell anything. She is not very good at scenting perfume; it
is only a short while since she always used to blow at a rose instead of
inhaling its odour. You must not laugh at her for that; one cannot learn
everything at once.

Besides, if she had as keen a sense of smell as her mother, she would be
no better off in this case. A hydrangea _has_ no scent; that is why
we get tired of it, for all its loveliness. But now Mademoiselle Marie
begins to think: "Perhaps it's made of sugar, this flower." Then she
opens her mouth very wide and is just going to lift the flower to her
lips.

But suddenly, _yap!_ goes her little dog. It is Toto, who comes bounding
over a geranium bed and comes to a stand right in front of Mademoiselle
Marie, with his ears cocked straight up, and stares hard at her out of
his sharp little round eyes.

THE PANDEAN PIPES

[Illustration: 182]

THREE children of the same village, Pierre, Jacques, and Jean, stand
staring, side by side in a row, where they look for all the world like
a mouth-organ or Pandean Pipes, only with three pipes instead of seven.
Pierre, to the left, is a tall lad; Jean, to the right, is a short
child; Jacques, who is betwixt the two, may call himself tall _or_
short, according as he looks at his left-hand or his right-hand
neighbour. It is a situation I would beg you to ponder, for it is
your own, and mine, and everybody else's. Each one of us is just like
Jacques, and deems himself great or small according as his neighbours'
inches are many or few.

That is the reason why it is true to say that Jacques is neither tall
nor short, and why it is also true to say he is tall _and_ he is short.
He is what God chooses him to be. For us, he is the middle reed of our
living Pandean Pipes.

But what is he doing, and what are his two comrades doing? They are
staring, staring hard, all three. What at? At something that has
disappeared in th