fectly happy.

When he had gone, the baker's wife and my friend gave each other a good
squeeze of the hand. "Poor little fellow!" said they both together. Then
she took down her account book, and, finding the page where the mother's
charges were written, made a great dash all down the page, and then
wrote at the bottom, "Paid."

Meanwhile my friend, to lose no time, had put up in paper all the money
in his pockets, where fortunately he had quite a sum that day, and had
begged the good wife to send it at once to the mother of the little
cricket-boy, with her bill receipted, and a note, in which he told her
she had a son who would one day be her joy and pride.

They gave it to a baker's boy with long legs, and told him to make
haste. The child, with his big loaf, his four crickets, and his little
short legs, could not run very fast, so that, when he reached home, he
found his mother, for the first time in many weeks, with her eyes raised
from her work, and a smile of peace and happiness upon her lips.

The boy believed that it was the arrival of his four little black things
which had worked this miracle, and I do not think he was mistaken.
Without the crickets, and his good little heart, would this happy change
have taken place in his mother's fortunes?

_From the French of Pierre J. Hetzel._

* * * * *

Jacques (zh[:a]k), James.

In the selection, find ten sentences that ask questions, and five that
express commands or requests.

What mark of punctuation always follows the first kind? The second?

Memorize:

In the evening I sit near my poker and tongs,
And I dream in the firelight's glow,
And sometimes I quaver forgotten old songs
That I listened to long ago.
Then out of the cinders there cometh a chirp
Like an echoing, answering cry,--
Little we care for the outside world,
My friend the cricket, and I.

For my cricket has learnt, I am sure of it quite,
That this earth is a silly, strange place,
And perhaps he's been beaten and hurt in the fight,
And perhaps he's been passed in the race.
But I know he has found it far better to sing
Than to talk of ill luck and to sigh,--
Little we care for the outside world,
My friend the cricket, and I.

* * * * *

_34_

For Recitation:

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