ith shrimp to the gunwales, and bringing home uncles
and big brothers and fathers. The little fleet will soon appear yonder
betwixt the ocean and God's sky with its white or brown sails. To-day
the sky is unclouded, the sea calm; the flood tide floats the fishers
gently to the shore. But the Ocean is a capricious old fellow, who takes
all shapes and sings in many voices. To-day he laughs; to-morrow he will
be growling in the night under his beard of foam. He shipwrecks the most
handy boats, though they have been blessed by the Priest to the chanting
of the _Te Deum_; he drowns the most skilful master mariners, and it is
all his fault you see in the village, before the cottage doors where
the nets hang to dry beside the fish-creels, so many women wearing black
widow's weeds.

GETTING WELL

[Illustration: 201]

GERMAINE is ill. Nobody knows how it began. The arm which sows fever is
invisible like the dustman's hand, the old fellow who comes every night
and makes the little ones so sleepy. But Germaine was not ill very
long and she was not very bad, and now she is getting well again. This
getting well is even pleasanter than being quite well, which comes next.
In the same way hoping and wishing are better, very often, than anything
we wish for or hope for. Germaine lies in bed in her pretty, bright
room, and her dreams are as bright-coloured as her room.

She looks, a little languidly still, at her doll, which sleeps beside
her own bed. There are sympathies that go deep between little girls and
their dolls. Germaine's doll fell ill at the same time as her little
mamma, and now she is getting well with her. She will take her first
carriage outing sitting by Germaine's side.

She has seen the doctor too. Alfred came to feel the doll's pulse. He is
Doctor "As-bad-as-can-be." He talks of nothing but cutting off arms and
legs. But Germaine asked him so earnestly that he agreed to cure her
dolly without slashing it to pieces. But he prescribed the nastiest
medicines.

Illness has one advantage at any rate; it makes us know our friends.
Germaine is sure now she can count on Alfred's goodness; she is certain
Lucie is the best of sisters. All the nine days her illness lasted,
Lucie came to learn her lessons and do her sewing in the sick room. She
insists on bringing the little patient her herb-tea herself. And it is
not a bitter potion, such as Alfred ordered; no, it is balmy with the
scent of wild flowers.

When she