te as snow.

One in crim-son bright is drest, With a star up-on his breast.

One in gold and one in green, Cloth of gold and sat-in sheen.

Hush, my ba-by, do not cry, Five brave knights go rid-ing by.

[Illustration: YES, THERE THEY CAME!]

THE APPLE DUMPLING

There was once upon a time an old woman who wanted an apple dumpling
for supper. She had plenty of flour and plenty of butter, plenty of
sugar and plenty of spice for a dozen dumplings, but there was one
thing she did not have; and that was an apple.

She had plums, a tree full of them, the roundest and reddest that you
can imagine; but, though you can make butter from cream and raisins of
grapes, you cannot make an apple dumpling with plums, and there is no
use trying.

The more the old woman thought of the dumpling the more she wanted it,
and at last she dressed herself in her Sunday best and started out to
seek an apple.

Before she left home, however, she filled a basket with plums from
her plum-tree and, covering it over with a white cloth, hung it on her
arm, for she said to herself: "There may be those in the world who
have apples, and need plums."

She had not gone very far when she came to a poultry yard filled with
fine hens and geese and guineas. Ca-ca, quawk, quawk, poterack! What a
noise they made; and in the midst of them stood a young woman who was
feeding them with yellow corn. She nodded pleasantly to the old woman,
and the old woman nodded to her; and soon the two were talking as if
they had known each other always.

The young woman told the old woman about her fowls and the old woman
told the young woman about the dumpling and the basket of plums for
which she hoped to get apples.

"Dear me," said the young woman when she heard this, "there is nothing
my husband likes better than plum jelly with goose for his Sunday
dinner, but unless you will take a bag of feathers for your plums he
must do without, for that is the best I can offer you."

"One pleased is better than two disappointed," said the old woman
then; and she emptied the plums into the young woman's apron and
putting the bag of feathers into her basket trudged on as merrily as
before; for she said to herself:

"If I am no nearer the dumpling than when I left home, I am at least
no farther from it; and that feathers are lighter to carry than plums
nobody can deny."

Trudge, trudge, up hill and down she went, and presently she came to a
garden of sweet flower