y over sickness and
medicine.

Puppet meditated. She felt very well. She thought that she had rather
play with the tip-cart than to take medicine. So she played all day,
and went to bed at night.

At night John come home from his work, and, as usual, heard of all
that had happened through the day.

"I wish we could keep the little thing, John, dear. She has yellow
hair, just like--"

"Yes," said John, "I saw."

"And she'd be _such_ a comfort!"

"If she didn't die by and by," said John.

"But, John, dear, just think of a little thing like her spending the
night in the middle of a meadow, with the water all about her."

John thought. And he thought that if she could stand that without
being sick, she could stand their love without dying.

So Puppet and the guitar live with John and the gray-haired lady.

MARY B. HARRIS.

[Illustration: "MIKE ROLLED OVER AND OVER TO THE FOOT OF THE STEPS."
See p. 169.]

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

All the hill-side was green with maples, and birches, and pines. The
meadows at its foot were green, too, with the tufted salt grass, and
glittering with the silver threads of tide braided among its winding
creeks. Beyond was the city, misty and gray, stretching its wan arms
to the phantom ships flitting along the horizon.

From the green hill-side you could hear the city's muffled hum and
roar, and sometimes the far-off clanging of the bells from its hundred
belfries. But the maples and birches seemed to hear and see nothing
beyond the sunshine over their heads and the winds which went
frolicking by. Life was one long dance with them, through the budding
spring and the leafy summer, and on through the grand gala days of
autumn, till the frost came down on the hills, and whispered,--

"Your dancing days are all over."

But the pines were quite different. They, the stately ones, stood
quite aloof, the older and taller ones looking stiffly over the heads
of the rollicking maples, and making solemn reverences to the great
gray clouds that swept inland from the ocean. The straight little
saplings at their feet copied the manners of their elders, and folding
their fingers primly, and rustling their stiff little green petticoats
decorously, sat up so silent and proper.

So unlike the small birches and maples that chattered incessantly,
wagging their giddy heads, and playing tag with the butterflies in the
sunshine all the day long!

"How tiresome those stupid old pines are! N