soon
be gone. If I were in your place, I would eat it all up first, and
then you will enjoy the rest of your dinner more when you do not have
it to think about."

Ruby did not so very much mind anything that she had to eat at dinner;
but two mornings in the week, Tuesday and Friday, there was always
egg-plant for breakfast, and for some weeks Ruby would think about it
all the day before, and talk about it the day after, until Aunt Emma
told her that she might as well eat eggplant for every meal every day,
she thought and talked so much about it.

"But I do hate it so," Ruby would say. "I don't see the use in having
to eat what one does n't like. I just can't bear it, Aunt Emma."

"But you will learn to like it after a while," Aunt Emma said. "Miss
Chapman thinks that little girls ought to learn to like everything that
is put before them, and she tries to have a pleasant variety, and not
have anything that the girls will dislike. You will see how much
easier it will be to eat your piece of egg plant in two or three weeks."

"And it just seems as if I always did get the very largest piece of
all," Ruby said in despair. "This morning you had a little teenty
piece and mine was twice as large."

"That was so you would have twice as much practice in learning to like
it, I suppose," Aunt Emma said with a smile.

After dinner was over there was a half-hour for play and then the
school-bell rang, and the girls went back into the school-room. Some
of them took music lessons, and they went one at a time to take a
lesson in the parlor from Miss Emma.

Ruby was to take music lessons, to her great delight. She had been
sure that it would be very easy, and she was quite disappointed when
she found how much she would have to learn before she could play as her
aunt did.

When school was over for the afternoon, at four o'clock, Ruby breathed
a long sigh of relief. The day had seemed a very long one to her,
though it had been very pleasant, and it seemed as if it could not be
possible that only yesterday at this time she had been on her way to
school.

"What do we do next?" asked Ruby of one of her schoolmates, as they
went into the house together.

"We all go out together for a walk," answered the little girl. "Will
you walk with me to-day? I will come to your room as soon as I am
ready."

"All right," Ruby answered, and she ran upstairs to her own room, to
put on her hat and jacket.

Every pleasant day the g