med.

"Well, mother," said she, twisting the corner of her handkerchief, "I
guess I can't say anything about Ruthie Turner; she's a great deal
better girl than I am, any way."

CHAPTER XI.

SUSY'S BIRTHDAY.

Days and weeks passed. The snowflakes, which had fallen from time to
time, and kept themselves busy making a patchwork quilt for mother
Earth, now melted away, and the white quilt was torn into shreds. The
bare ground was all there was to be seen, except now and then a dot of
the white coverlet. It was Spring, and everything began to wake up. The
sun wasn't half so sleepy, and didn't walk off over the western hills in
the middle of the afternoon to take a nap.

The sleighing was gone long ago. The roads were dismal swamps. "Wings"
would have a rest till "settled going." Susy's skates were hung up in a
green baize bag, to dream away the summer.

The mocking-bird performed his daily duties of entertaining the family,
besides learning a great many new songs. Susy said she tried not to set
her heart on that bird.

"I'll not give him a name," she added, "for then he'll be sure to die!
My first canary was Bertie, and I named the others Berties, as fast as
they died off. The last one was so yellow that I couldn't help calling
him Dandelion; but I wish I hadn't, for then, perhaps, he'd have lived."

Susy had caught some whimsical notions about "signs and wonders." It is
strange how some intelligent children will believe in superstitious
stories! But as soon as Susy's parents discovered that her young head
had been stored with such worse than foolish ideas, they were not slow
to teach her better.

She had a great fright, about this time, concerning Freddy Jackson. He
was one of the few children who were allowed to play in "Prudy's
sitting-room." He did not distract the tired nerves of "Rosy Frances,"
as her cousin Percy and other boys did, by sudden shouts and loud
laughing. Prudy had a vague feeling that he was one of the little ones
that God thought best to punish by "snipping his heart." She knew what
it was to have _her_ heart snipped, and had a sympathy with little
Freddy.

Susy loved Freddy, too. Perhaps Percy was right, when he said that Susy
loved everything that was dumb; and I am not sure but her tender heart
would have warmed to him all the more if he had been stone-blind, as
well as deaf.

Freddy had a drunken father, and a sad home; but, for all that, he was
not entirely miserable. It is o