standing on his
four legs like respectable dogs, he fell over on his side. Effie took
the dog, but did not seem half so glad to get it as her mother thought
she would, and even forgot to thank her for it.

"Oh, mother!" said she, "did you see that real old man just now, with
such long white hair, and a white coat that came way down to his heels,
and his head went just so"--shaking her own, "and oh! he told me I might
have any thing I wanted, and I said I wanted to go down to the bottom of
the ocean, and he said I should, and he's coming again on my next
birth-day, and I am to wish for something again. Do you think he really
can take me to the bottom of the sea?"

"Nonsense! child. It's some old crazy man. I wonder you didn't run away
from him. Come into the house, it's time for you to go to bed. And bring
your dog along with you. You mustn't eat it. It's only to play with."

"I hate that nasty little dog!" said Effie, and her pretty face became
twisted into a pucker, "and I don't want to go to bed."

"Tut, tut! Puss," said Father Gilder, who was smoking his pipe by the
fire. "What! naughty on your birth-day? I thought you were going to be
good always after this. I guess she's tired, mother."

Effie's pouting was crying by this time, and Mother Gilder brought a
handkerchief out of another of her pockets, and wiping the child's face,
led her to her little cot and put her to bed with the little dog where
she could see it when she woke up, lying stiff on his side with his tail
straight up in the air.

Father Gilder shook his head. "'T won't do, mother," said he, "we can't
have little Effie a cross child. Bless me! why, my pipe's out! where's
some tobacco?"

"Here," said Mrs. Gilder, plunging her hand into another of her
wonderful apron's pockets and fishing out some tobacco, and then diving
into another for matches, filling and lighting her old man's pipe. They
looked at the little child lying in her crib, and thought now they would
do any thing in the world to make her happy and good. She was fast
asleep now, and her little face had become untied--for you know it was
in a knot when she lay down--and now she was smiling in her sleep.
Perhaps she was dreaming about the old man with the beautiful voice, and
thinking she saw him again.

The next day, Effie was playing on the beach, picking up the shells and
making little holes in the sand, watching to see the water come up and
fill them, when she remembered the old m