read and preserves, which Mr
Maclean placed in succession upon his plate.

At last he could no longer restrain his anxiety to know what his papa
had brought. Fanny also thought she should like to know, but had
refrained from saying anything.

"What have you brought for us there?" he asked at length, pointing
towards them.

"You may bring them and we will see," answered his papa.

Norman jumped up, and, seizing the parcels, began tearing them open.

"Stop, stop!" cried his grandmamma, who observed him. "You do not know
which is for you; and your papa told you to bring them."

Norman paid but little attention to what Mrs Leslie said, and had
almost torn one of them open before his papa took them.

"We must look at the one for Fanny first, as she is a young lady,"
observed Captain Vallery, feeling the parcels, and undoing one, he
presented Fanny with a box which had a glass top, and inside of it was a
white swan with three gaily-coloured fish.

"If we had a basin of water we should be able to make the swan and fish
swim about," said Captain Vallery; "I never saw anything of the sort
before, and was sure Fanny would like it."

Now Fanny had not only seen but possessed a magnetic toy similar to the
one her papa had brought her. She had, however, given it away to a
young friend who had expressed a wish to possess it; and Fanny had
assured her that she found no great amusement in it herself.

Mrs Leslie, too, knew this, and was pleased to see the affectionate way
in which Fanny thanked her papa. Fanny, though she did not care for the
gift herself, was grateful to him for having brought it to her, and she
thought that it would, at all events, amuse Norman, who had never seen
anything of the sort. She therefore gladly jumped down to ring the bell
that the servant might bring a dish of water for the swan and fish to
swim in, and to be attracted by the magnet, which she found carefully
wrapped up at the bottom of the box. She looked forward with pleasure
to the surprise her brother would exhibit at seeing the fish and swan
come at her call.

Norman, who was in the meantime fumbling away at the other parcel, eyed
her toy with a feeling very like that which had entered his heart when
she had her beautiful doll given to her. His parcel felt soft, he
feared that it was of very little value, and he wondered what it could
possibly be. At last the paper was torn off.

"Why, it's only the skin of an old football with