THE GLASS PEACOCK.  
Annar-Mariar lived in Mellin's Court, in one of the queerest and oldest parts of London. Being out of 
the way of motors,
Mellin's Court became the natural playground for the children that lived there. One day, as the 
organ-grinder was
passing through it, a group of children were clustered around the little sweet-stuff shop, which sold 
bright sweets in
ha'porths, or even farthingworths. None of the children had any farthings that day except 
Annar-Mariar, and she had a
whole penny. Her little brother, Willyum, was clinging to the hand that held the penny, and telling 
her all the things
that he liked best in the jars in the window. He knew his Annar-Mariar, and so did the other children 
who were not her
brothers and sisters.
" I like the lickerish shoe-strings," said Willyum.
" I like the comfits with motters on," said Mabel Baker.
"And I like the pink and white mouses," said Willyum.
" Those bull's-eyes are scrumpshous," observed Doris Goodenough.
"And the chocklit mouses," continued Willyum, " and I like the long stripy sticks, and those chocklit bars with pink inside."
"Pear drops," murmured Kitty Farmer.
" And white inside, too," said Willyum.
While Annar-Mariar was puzzling how to make
 her penny go round, she saw  the organ-grinder, and cried, " Oo! an organ !" The other children turned.
"Play us a tune, mister," they, cried. The organ-grinder shook his head.  "No time to-day," he said. 
Annar-Mariar saw the
way out of her problem. She smiled at the organ-grinder and held out her penny.
It was Annar-Mariar's nice smile, and not her penny, that won the day.  Annar-Mariar was quite an ordinary looking little girl till 
she smiled. Then you felt you would do anything for her. This was because Annar-Mariar would always do anything
for anybody. Everybody in Mellin's Court knew
that Annar-Mariar would always be ready to heal
the hurt, and soothe the quarrel, and mend the doll,
and mind the baby. She would not only be ready
to, but she could do it; because everybody did what
she wanted them to do.
So the organ-grinder refused her penny, and stopped and played three tunes for her smile; and the 
children got a jolly
dance for nothing, and Willyum got a pair of liquorice shoe-strings for a farthing. The rest of 
Annar-Mariar's penny
went in hundreds-and-thousands, and every child licked its finger and had a dip. There wasn't a 
fingerful over for Annar-Mariar, so she tore open the tiny bag and licked it off with her tongue.
Christmas drew near, and the little shops in Mellin's Court began to look happy. The sweet-stuff 
shop had a fairy doll
in white muslin and tinsel in the middle of the window, and some paper festoons and cheap toys 
appeared among the
glass bottles. At the greengrocer's, evergreens and pineapples appeared, and on one magic morning, Christmas trees. The grocery 
window at the corner had already  blossomed  into  dates and figs and candied fruits and blue-and-white jars of ginger; and the 
big confectioner's in the High Street, as well as puddings in 
basins, had a
Christmas cake in the window a yard square - a great, flat, frosted " set piece " covered with 
robins, windmills, snow-babies, and a scarlet Santa Claus with a sledge full of tiny toys. The cake would presently be cut 
up and sold by the
pound, and you got the attraction's on top " as you came " -- oh lucky, lucky buyer-to-be of the Santa Claus sledge!
As Christmas drew nearer, it became plainer and plainer to Annar-Mariar that this year, for one 
reason or another,
Christmas was not going to bring her and Willyum, anything. And it didn't. Up to the last they got 
their treat from the
shop windows, and did their shopping there. Annar-Mariar never stinted her Christmas shopping.
" What'll you have, Willyum? I'll have the Fairy Queen, I think. Would you like those trains? "
"SS!" said Willyum, "and I'd like the Fairy Queen."
" All right, you have her. Ill have that music-box."
At  the confectioner's -  "Shall we have a  big pudding for us both, or a little pudding each, Willyum?"
"A big pudding each !" said Willyum. 
"All right, and those red crackers with the gold balls on, and I'll tell them to send the big cake round, too, shall I?"
"SS!" said  Willyum, "and I'll have the Farver Chrismuss."
"All right, ducks, you can."
Thus under Annar-Mariar's lavish disregard for money, there was plenty of everything for them both, and for anybody who cared 
to "drop in" on Christmas Day.
It came and passed. The windows began to be emptied of their attractions for another year. Life went 
on. The New
Year rang itself in. At dusk on Twelfth Night Annar-Mariar knelt on the paving stones in Mellin's 
Court, and renewed a
chalk game which had suffered during the day. She happened to be the only child about, a rare 
occurrence there. She
heard footsteps go by her, but did not look up at once; only, as they passed, she became aware of a 
tiny tinkling
accompaniment to the footsteps. Then she did look up. A lady was going along the alley with something astonishing in her 
hands.
" Oo! " gasped Annar-Mariar.
The lady stopped. What she was carrying was a Christmas tree, quite a little tree, but such a radiant 
little tree. It was
glittering, and tinkling with all the prettiest fantasies in glass that the mind of Christmas had 
been able to invent: little
glass lamps and candlesticks, shining balls of every colour, a scarlet and silver Father Christmas 
also in glass,
chains, festoons of gold and silver beads, stars, flowers, and long clear drops like icicles; birds, 
too, in glass, blue
and yellow birds seeming to fly, and one, proudest and loveliest of all, a peacock shimmering in 
blue and green and
gold, with  a crest and long, long tail of fine spun glass, like silk.
"Oo! A Crismuss tree!" gasped Annar-Mariar. 
The lady did an undreamed-of thing. She came straight up to Annar-Mariar and said, " Would you like it ?"
Annar-Mariar gazed at her, and very slowly smiled. The lady put the tinkling, twinkling tree into her 
hands. " This,"
she said, " was for the first little girl that said ' Oo ' - and you're that girl."
Annar-Mariar began to giggle - she simply couldn't say "Thank you," she could only giggle and giggle. 
Her smile,
however, turned her giggling into the loveliest laughter, and seemed to be saying " Thank you," on 
top of it. The lady
laughed, and disappeared from Mellin's Court. Willyum appeared in her place. "What's that? "
"It's a Crismuss tree. A lady gave it to me."
Willyum scampered screaming down the alley. "Annar-Mariar's got a Crismuss tree that a lady gave 
her." The
crowd collected. They gathered round the tree, looking, touching, admiring, and the "Oos! " came thick and fast.
" What are you going to do with it, Annar?
" I shall keep it by my bed to-night," said Annar-Mariar, "and to-morrow I shall give a party." 
Longing glances flew about her.
"Can I come, Annar-Mariar?"
"Can I?"
"Let me come, won't you, Annar-Mariar?"
"You can all come," said Annar-Mariar.
That night, that one blissful night, the little tree in all its gleaming beauty shone upon Annar-Mariar's dreams -  waking dreams, 
for she hardly
slept  at all. She kept looking at it, and feeling it
when she couldn't see it, running her finger along
the glassy chains, outlining the fragile flowers and
stars, stroking  the silken tail of the miraculous
peacock. To-morrow night she knew her tree would
be harvested, but she thought her own particular fruit might be the peacock. If so, he could sit on
the tree beside her bed for ever, and every night she could stroke his spun-glass tail.
 The morrow came. The party was held after tea.
 Every child in Mellin's Court took home a treasure.
 Willyum wanted the  Father Christmas,  and had
him. The other children did not ask for the peacock. Somehow they knew how much Annar-Mariar wanted 
it, and
recognized that off her tree she should have what she prized most. Little Lily Kensit did murmur, 
when her turn came:
" I'd like the peack -" But her big brother clapped his hand over her mouth, and said firmly, "Lil 
would like the rose,
Annar-Mariar. Look, Lil, it's got a diamond in the middle."
" Oo! " said Lil greedily.
So when the party was over, and the little empty tree was dropping its dried, needles on the table, 
Annar-Mariar was
left in possession of the magical bird whose tail she had touched in her dreams.
When she came to put Willyum to bed he was sobbing bitterly.
"What's the matter, ducks ?"
" I broke my Farver Crismuss."
" Oh, Willyum - you never."
" Yes I did." Willyum was inconsolable. 
"Don't cry, ducks." "I want your peacock." "All right. You can. 
Don't cry."
 Annar-Mariar gave Willyum her peacock. He
sobbed himself to sleep clutching it, and in the
night he dropped it out of bed. Annar-Mariar
heard it " go " as she lay beside her little empty
tree. All night long its pungent scent was in her
nostrils, and the tiny crickle of its dropping needles
in her ears.
And in the room  of every other child in Mellin's Court some lovely thing was set above its dreams, 
a bird, a flower, or star of coloured glass, to last perhaps a day, a week, a few months, or a year -  even many years.
-Adapted from "One Foot in Fairyland," by
ELEANOR FARJEON. (Michael Joseph, Ltd.)

THE CROCKMAN.
The Crockman journeys along quiet lanes and hill-tracks, and as a rule the small market town in the 
centre of a lonely
district is the largest place he ever sees. As his name implies, he sells china, or rather, rough 
earthenware, deep red,
partly glazed milk-bowls, yellow butter-crocks, blue and white barrel milk-jugs, and semi-porcelain 
cups and saucers
such as are used in farm houses and cottages.
He sells salt too, which is always in demand. A bar of salt, in addition to the huge basket  of 
groceries, is too much
even for the strong arms of
"Mother," as she starts courageously home on market day, coming, first by carrier's cart, which sets 
her down a mile or so from
home. She is glad, therefore,
to have the salt brought to her door.
A strong float, like a coster's cart is the
Crockman's vehicle. It is drawn by an old pony
bought for a song, or by a hill pony broken-in at
home. The float looks gay careering along bleak
hillsides, down misty valleys, and drawing up with
a flourish before the open door of the farm. There
is a subdued clashing of ware. If it is sunny, the
daffodil-tinted bowls and terra-cotta buttermits glow
like jewels. The salt  sparkles. Willow-pattern
dishes shine cleanly. Out comes the Missus. She
buys a bar of salt, six pitcher eggs, and a large
pot-bellied beer jug with red flowers painted on it,
because the master's jug was broken last harvest.
The bargaining over, the Crockman has a mug of ale,
or, if  there is " prosperation " on the farm, a sit-down
knife-and-fork tea with bacon and potatoes.
On market day in his metropolis, the Crockman renews his stores, spreads his wares on straw in 
The market, usually
in the open air, and from the rostrum of an orange box proceeds to sell them. When his great voice 
goes roaring
down the busy aisles, a crowd gathers - lads with straws in their mouths -old ladies in white aprons and vast brooches of polished 
stone, girls with
butter baskets, shepherds whose calm will probably be undisturbed by Judgement Day, children with 
gingerbread in
their mouths and on their persons.
The Crockman holds up a large willow-pattern dish.
"Tuppence."
"Fivepence."
"Ladies and gents, this is 'eartbreaking! The biggest dish ever I sold! You can put half a sheep on 
it if you've a mind.
Ladies, if you please!"
"A tanner."
"Ten three fardens."
"Now, now, people all, you're laughing at poor Jack. Ten-three for a dish worth five shilling?"
"A bob."
"The Ten Commandments," says the Crockman, "you may forget and welcome. But meanness I cannot abide. A bob for my 
beautiful dish ? People, I'd 
sooner break it!"
And holding it high above his head he sends it crashing on to the pavement.
Who is to know, unless the Crockman tells the secret, that the dish was " flawed seconds" and only intended for this dramatic 
moment?
-MARY WEBB, in "Poems and Spring of Joy." (Jonathan Cape.)

THE JAM PUFFS.
 On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and 
suggestive scents, as of plum cakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the
aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Tom  and 
Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen and, like other marauders, they were induced to
keep aloof for a time, only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.
"Tom,", said Maggie as they sat on the boughs of the elder tree eating their jam puffs, " shall you run away to-morrow?"
"No," said Tom slowly, when he had finished his puff and was eyeing the third, which was to be divided 
between them, " no, I shan't."
"Why Tom? Because Lucy's coming?"
"No," said Tom opening his pocket knife and holding it over the puff with his head on one side. "What 
do I care about Lucy? She's only a girl. She can't play at bandy."
" Is it tipsy-cake, then? " said Maggie, while she leaned forward towards Tom with her eyes fixed on 
the hovering knife.
"No, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudding - I know what the pudding's to be -- apricot 
roll-up - O my buttons! " With this interjection from Tom, the knife descended on the puff, and it was 
in
two; but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last 
he said, " Shut your eyes, Maggie."
"What for?"
"You never mind what for. Shut them when I tell you." Maggie obeyed. "Now which'll you have, Maggie, 
right hand or left!
"I'll have that with the jam run out," said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom.
" Why, you don't like that. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I shan't give it you 
without. Right or left, you choose now. Ha-a-a!" said Tom, as Maggie peeped, " You keep your eyes shut
now, or else you shan't have any."
Maggie's power of sacrifice did not extend so far as that; indeed, I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible 
amount of puff,
than that he should be pleased with her for giving
him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close till Tom told her to "say which," and. then she
said, " left hand."
" You've got it," said Tom in rather a bitter tone.
" What! the bit with the jam run out? "
" No, here, take it," said Tom firmly, handing decidedly the best piece to Maggie.
" Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don't mind; I like the other; please take this."
" No, I shan't," said Tom almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.
Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further  began too, and ate up her half of puff with 
considerable relish as well as rapidity. Tom, however, had finished first and had to look on while
Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn't know Tom was 
looking at her; she was see-sawing on the elder bough, lost to almost everything but a
vague sense of jam and idleness.
" Oh, you greedy thing! " said Tom, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of 
having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this and made up to him
for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own 
share of puff is swallowed.
Maggie turned quite pale. " Oh, Tom, why didn't you ask me?"
"I wasn't  going to ask you for a bit. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."
"I wanted you to have it-you know I did," said Maggie in an injured tone.
"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit if you don't punch him for it; and if 
you chose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But  if I go halves I'll go them fair - only I wouldn't be a greedy."
With this Tom jumped down from his bough and threw a stone with a " Hoigh! " as a friendly 
attention to Yap, who had been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears
and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Tom's 
attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.
Maggie, however, sat still on her bough and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. 
She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for
Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice; but she would have gone without it many times over rather 
than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it,
and she ate it without thinking --- how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that 
Maggie saw nothing round her for the next ten minutes. By that time resentment began to give way to
the desire to make friends again, and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom.
 Maggie ran to the high bank against the great
holly tree, where she could see far away towards
the Floss. There was Tom; but her heart sank
again as she saw how far off he was on his way
to the great river, and that he had another
companion besides Yap - naughty Bob Jakin.
 It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob's
 company. How could it be otherwise? Bob knew,
directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a
 swallow's or a tomtit's or a yellowhammer's; he
 found out all the wasps' nests and could set all sorts
of traps; he could climb trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats. Every holiday-
time
Maggie was sure to have days of grief because Tom had gone of with Bob. 
Well! there was no hope for it: he was gone now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit 
down by the holly
or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just 
what she should like it
to be.
-From the "Mill on the Floss," by GEORGE ELLIOT.

THE WRECK OF THE "SWALLOW."
The Walker children, John, Susan, Titty and eight-year-old Roger, were 
spending their holidays for the second time
camping on an island in a lake. They arranged one day to meet their 
friends, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, at
Horseshoe Cove on the mainland, and to do some exploring there. The 
Blacketts would sail their little ship, Amazon,
to the cove and the Walkers were to cross the lake in Swallow.
While the Walkers' camp was being made tidy for the day, John had seen 
through the telescope Amazon sailing fast down the lake along the farther shore, until she reached the narrow 
entrance into Horseshoe Cove. Then Nancy
and Peggy had jibbed her smartly, brought the sail over on the other 
side, and shot out of sight into the little bay.
While he was watching, he was planning, of course, exactly what he would 
do in sailing Swallow across there.
Captain John made up his mind to run down wind to the cove, with the sail 
out on the port side. By doing that he thought he would be able to turn into the cove, without having to jib in the rough water and 
strong wind.
At last every-thing was stowed, the crew aboard, and Swallow was pushed off, stern first.
" There's quite a lot of wind," said Mate Susan, when they were clear of the rocks.
" That's why I was in a hurry," said the Captain. "Now then, see that the main sheet is free so that the boom can swing right out. 
I'm going to hoist 
the sail up now. Are you ready?"
" Aye, aye, sir," said the mate.
John shipped the oars, hooked on the yard, and swayed up the brown sail. The boom swung out free, so 
that the sail was no more than a big flag. John hurried aft to the tiller. He hauled in ever so
little on the main sheet, so that the sail held the wind, and Swallow began to move. Then, putting the tiller up, he let her bear 
away until she was heading straight for Horseshoe Cove. The little pennant flew
out straight before her from the masthead, and the water creamed out from under her forefoot as she 
gathered speed.
The wind was dead aft, and stronger with every yard they moved out of the shelter of the island. With 
Susan beside him in the stern sheets, and Roger, ship's boy, and Titty, able-seaman,
crowded aft, it was all that John could do to keep the Swallow steady on her course. The wind 
pressing on her sail seemed to be trying to lift her rudder out of the water, and that did not make
steering easy.
"She's going faster than a motor-boat," said Roger. "Oughtn't we to have reefed?" said the mate. 
"The Amazons hadn't," said the captain. With his teeth tight-clenched, hanging on to the main
sheet with one hand, and holding the tiller as hard as he could with the other, he was doing his 
utmost to keep Swallow on her course. Every now and then came a puff of wind so sudden and so strong that it forced the nose of 
the boat round before John 
could put her back on her course again. Each time this happened it looked less and less likely
that John would be able to sail into the cove without having to jib twice over. The little pennant 
was no longer blowing directly forward over the stem, nor was it blowing out with the sail, when it
would have shown that all was safe. There was the sail out to port, and there at the masthead, was 
the pennant fluttering to starboard, showing that there was a danger of the wind's catching the
leech of the sail and swinging it right over. A jib of that kind,
not done on purpose, was what John was trying to avoid. He had made up his mind that he could get 
across without having to jib at all.
" We ought to be able to do it," he said aloud, really because he began to be not quite sure.
" Remember the Pike Rock," said Susan.
" We are much more likely to hit the rocks on this side if we get a gust like that one just as we are 
going in," said John. " We ought to have reefed, really. It's blowing much harder than it was a
few minutes ago; but it would be a terrible job to bring her head to wind and reef here. Besides we 
are nearly there. I'm sure she'll do it."
With his eye all the time on the warning pennant at the masthead, and watching for a tremble in the 
leech of the sail, John saw Nancy and Peggy waving
from the rocks at the entrance to the cove. That settled it. He could not give up his plan now. In another minute he would have 
done it, and be safe within the headlands. Another twenty yards! The leech of the sail was ashake. Another ten! Could he do it, or 
could he not ! He could, surely he could!
"Look at the waves breaking on Pike Rock," said Roger.
And at that very moment off the mouth of the cove, only a few yards from safety, the wind, leaping at 
them in a last furious gust, caught the wrong side of the sail and whirled it across.
"Keep your heads down," shouted John, but for that there was no need. Titty and Roger were crouched 
in the bottom of the boat and the mate had ducked in time. So had John himself. The boom
crashed over, but broke no heads. John, however, had been pulling hard on the tiller to keep the Swallow on her course. She was 
moving very fast. The moment the sail lifted there was nothing to
balance the rudder. A moment later, and the full force of the wind caught the sail on the other side. 
The Swallow spun round out of all control and ran with a loud crash on Pike Rock. The rock
stopped her dead. The mast broke off and fell forward over her bows, taking the sail with it.
There was a shriek, but it was from. Peggy Blackett on the rocks at the entrance to the cove. There 
were no shrieks in Swallow. It had all happened too quickly. Everybody had been jerked
forward as the boat struck the rock. Everybody was holding fast to whatever had happened to come nearest. Roger spoke first as 
the Swallow slipped back off the rock.
"The water's coming in," he said. It was not so much an exclamation as a plain statement of fact. 
Swallow was badly holed below the water-line in the bows. The water was spouting in and she
was filling fast.  Hundreds of times the children  had had imaginary shipwrecks. This was a real one.
"Over you go, Roger, and swim ashore," said Captain John. " Go on. Hop out." Roger looked at the mate and then at John to see 
if he meant it. Then he looked at the shore. It was only a few yards away. "Go on," said John. "Don't wait. She'll be gone in a 
minute." Roger rolled himself
over the side. For one second he hung on to the gunwale. "Isn't it a good thing I went on with the 
swimming lessons in the winter?" he said, and then splashed off on his way to land and safety.
"Now then, Titty! You too, Susan! Be quick!"
Susan and Titty went overboard one after the other. Titty swam ashore as fast as she could, holding 
some
thing above the water as she swam. Susan trod water for a moment waiting for John. "Come on John," she said. John was 
fumbling under water in the bows of the boat. "Look out," he shouted. "Be quick, out of the way!"
 He stood up with Swallow's little anchor and threw it as far as he could towards the headland. At 
that moment the boat lurched sideways as the water came over the gunwale. John tumbled
out, and kicked himself off with one foot against the sinking Swallow. He was not a second too soon.
They all reached land safely, Roger being hauled in at the end of a rope thrown to him by Nancy and 
Peggy. There was nothing of the Swallow to be seen, except a couple of oars and a floating
knapsack. " She's gone!" said Titty. " I've saved the telescope."
"Good old Titty," said Captain John.
Captain John knew all the bitterness of a captain who has lost his ship. Now that it was too late, he 
was telling himself that he ought to have guessed how strong the wind would be. Yes, it was
clear that he ought to have reefed. If he had reefed, the jib would not have mattered so much. He 
could quite easily have sailed some distance down the lake with the sail to starboard and then
jibbed carefully, or even come up into the wind and gone about, so as to reach the cove with the sail 
out to port just as he had wanted it for running in. It was all his fault, and now Swallow was gone.
But Swallow was not entirely gone. By dint of the brave efforts of Captain John and the crews of the Swallow and the Amazon, 
she was at last raised and beached.
"Oh, poor dear! " said Titty. As Swallow's forefoot, came up out of the water she had seen the dreadful hole in the planking out 
of which the water was now pouring. The party turned Swallow on
her beam ends to empty out the last of the water, and then turned her over altogether. No pirates ever looked more anxiously over 
their ship beached on gold sand on some Pacific Island than our explorers searched now to see what damage had 
come to Swallow. There were a good many scratches in her paint, but no serious hurt
except the gaping hole in her bows where two planks had been stove in by the Pike Rock.
"Well,"' said Nancy, "we've got her up, and that's the main thing." And Nancy was right, for in time 
all the repairs were made, John himself doing some good work on Swallow's new mast.
- Retold from " Swallowdale," by ARTHUR RANSOME. (Jonathan Cape.)

PENNYWORTH.
Coming out of school, Johnny Moon found a penny. Only Mabel Barnard saw 
him pick it up.
"Oh; you lucky! " she said. " What are you going to do with it, Johnny? " 
Johnny Moon had no doubt whatever on that
point. "Chocklit! " he said.
Johnny Moon did not go home to dinner, and he did not go home to tea; by 
bedtime Mrs. Moon was in a " state."
After inquiries had reached as far as Mabel Barnard, Mrs. Moon had made 
a round of the sweetshops. Johnny had
been to none of them. The Police Station knew nothing; the Hospital knew 
nothing. Gipsies? Soon the story spread
through that quarter of Horgate that Johnny Moon had been kidnapped by 
gipsies.
Johnny Moon had not been kidnapped by gipsies. He was getting his 
pennyworth.
 Anybody can go into a sweetshop, push a penny
over the counter, and get back a bar of chocolate.
But once in his lifetime, Johnny Moon had been taken to the station outside the town to meet his Uncle Tom from Portsmouth. 
That was an event
because more than the rush and bustle, more than 
the greeting from a big, new, red-faced uncle, more
even than the great panting engine, and the thrill
of seeing another train race through the station
without stopping, letting out a glorious shriek and
a banner of thick white smoke; more than all this,
the memory was branded on Johnny's mind of
seeing a boy post a penny in a tall machine, pull a
handle, and be miraculously rewarded with a bar
of chocolate. How very different must this chocolate
be from the penny chocolate anybody could get in
the shops!
Johnny's burning wish to post a penny of his own in that machine one day, and pull the handle, and find the wonderful bar. The 
thrill of pulling the handle alone was worth a farthing, 
and the chance of hearing one engine pant and another one scream was worth quite two farthings
more... When, therefore, Johnny Moon found a penny to spend as he pleased, he turned his fat short 
legs at once in the direction of the station, and reached it just as Mrs. Moon was saying,
"Bother that child, why can't he come home on time?"
There were the machines! His great wish was about to be realized. Johnny Moon rushed at the nearest, 
and with a pounding heart posted his penny. Then he grasped the handle with his fist and
tugged. It came easily; and with it came a little cardboard ticket. He couldn't believe his eyes. 
What horrid trick had the magic machine chosen to play him? He pushed the drawer back and
tugged again, but it did not open. His penny had vanished; his chance was over; there was no magic 
chocolate for him after all. There was, in fact, nothing to do, but to burst into tears.
A lady came up to him. She bent down, looked at the little ticket, and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
"What's the matter, dear? Don't cry. Are you afraid, to go on to the platform by yourself? Come along with me. I'm going to meet 
my little girl from London. Who are you going to meet?"
"Uncle Tom from Porssmouff," said Johnny Moon.
 His tears dried like magic. What was happening was too good to be true. Clutching the lady's hand,
 he found himself passing through a little gate into
 a great palace with a glass roof, the palace where
 the engines lived.  It was another world with smells
and sights and sounds of its own. It was full of doors into strange places, and stairs that went up to the glass roof and down into 
stone caverns, and many long platforms  with railway lines between 
them. Then with such a roar that Johnny gasped, a train came snorting in and pulled up beside
them.
The lady cried, " There's my little girl! Gladys! Gladys! Porter! Gladys darling, here we are! 
Porter! There's a trunk in the van! Oh, porter! Where does the Portsmouth train come in?" _.
" Platform five," said the porter, and the lady said to Johnny pointing, " Down there, dear, and then 
run along till you see number five-you can read numbers can't you?
" Yes," said Johnny, and trotted quickly down the stone stairs into the mysterious cavern below, 
afraid that somebody might stop him before he found out where it led.
He stayed in the cavern for quite a long time. It was too good to leave all at once: You could strut 
and stamp and run from end to end, pretending to be a train, and when you shrieked "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo - " your voice sounded 
different. You ran up and down three times without stopping, shrieking 
a little louder, stamping a little harder, running a little faster each time. A man looked at you
and laughed, but nobody bothered you as they jostled to and fro.
The journeys back and forth carried you past openings where daylight came down staircases, and 
every staircase had a big number, and you chanted "One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six!" as you passed them. The numbers rang 
back at you in a strange 
new voice after you had said them.
Presently a porter pushing a truck said, " Out of the way, young 'un! " and stared at Johnny rather 
hard. Johnny loitered a moment to let him pass, and then scuttled up the nearest staircase.
Daylight and warmth again but not the same platform! He could see across two platforms the gate by which he had come in, but 
now he was in the middle of the new world. People were waiting by 
piles of luggage, or sitting on seats. A little way off a calf lay under a net. Johnny strutted up
to it and said " Moo-oo! " and poked his finger through the netting to feel its soft nose. The calf 
shrank back and said " Moo-oo! " back at Johnny, like the echo in the tunnel underground.
There was a little house in the middle of this platform full of glass jars of food and cups of tea. 
Suddenly Johnny felt that he hadn't had his dinner. He went in and stared at the buns in the glass
cases, till the girl behind them stopped talking to a sailor and said, " Make up your mind then!" and 
Johnny moved slowly away.
The sailor said, " Here, mate!" and, before Johnny knew it, a sticky, sugary bun was in his hand. He 
hurried outside to eat it before the girl could snatch it back. He thought perhaps he ought to eat
it on a farther platform, and he went down into the cavern again. At the foot of the stairs he 
bumped into a very small girl, grasping a spade and bucket, and trailing after a large family of 
parents
and brothers and sisters.
 She said, "Oh, sowry! " though Johnny had
done the bumping. " I've been to Lillamton," she
went on. " I've got some peppermints." She pulled
out a bag and offered them to Johnny. He helped
himself to two.  "My name's Dorinda. Well, good-bye. I must go now."
"Good-bye," said Johnny Moon, and went round to platform six, while Dorinda trailed back to platform 
one.
Platform six was in the open air. A very small train was standing still. Nobody was about, so Johnny climbed into a carriage with 
a dusty red-carpet seat and sat in a farther corner, and ate his bun, and sucked his peppermints, staring out at a mountain of coal 
with green trees beyond. While 
he was sucking his second sweet, the coal and the trees got mixed up together and
changed into his red-faced Uncle Tom talking to the bun-girl in Johnny's own school room, only the 
bun-girl was Dorinda, and the calf was trying to teach them lessons.
Then Johnny sat up with a jerk, because the little train was moving. It moved slowly until the coal 
mountain was out of sight and the green trees turned into a green field. Then it stopped.
" Porssmouff! " cried Johnny Moon, and climbed down from his seat; but the train moved backwards and 
the coal mountain came in sight again. Some men were on it, filling trucks on the other
side.
Johnny left his carriage and crossed the railway line on a bridge and went to watch the men. Some 
boys were chucking lumps of coal into a truck and Johnny chucked some, too. When he had thrown about five lumps, one of the 
men called out, " Run along home, you blacklegs! " and the boys 
scampered off laughing. Johnny, wondering why the man had not said " blackhands," went
back to his engine palace.  He went to see the calf again, but it was not there. A hand grasped him 
by the collar. He wriggled and turned and looked up into the face of a porter.
"Here," said the porter, " I've seen you before. What's your game?
 "Uncle Tom's coming from Porssmouff," explained Johnny Moon.
" Portsmouth train's just gone," said the porter. "You'd better hop it, or somebody'll be in stew. 
Off you go!"
Then Johnny knew his pennyworth was up.
As he came out of the station where the lamps were now lit, a man was hurrying, and a boy was 
lingering by the tall machines, posting a penny.
" Come on! " shouted the man.
" But, Daddy, I just-"
"Come on, I tell you! We'll be late! " The man grabbed his son by the hand and rushed him away.
Johnny went up to the machine where the boy had posted a penny, and tugged the handle. It came 
easily. There lay a bar of chocolate. Slowly, contentedly, Johnny Moon trudged back home,
sucking chocolate and coal-dust as he went.
-ELEANOR FARJEON, in "One Foot in Fairyland." (Michael Joseph, Ltd.) Adapted.

THE POND.
The whole pond was alive.
 There were not only great horrid pikes, and
 carp and perch and sticklebacks and eels. There
 were crayfish and frogs, pond-snails and fresh-water
 mussels, water-beetles and daddy-long-legs. There was the duck, who quacked at her ducklings, and the swan, who glided over 
the water with bent neck
and rustling wings, stately and elegant. There was
 the dragon-fly who buzzed through the air, and there
 were the dragon-fly's young, who crawled upon the
 water-plants and ate till they burst. Not that that
 mattered; they just had to burst if they were to
 come to anything.
There was the bladder-wort with his innocent white flowers above the water and his death-traps down 
at the bottom,
and the spider, who was his lodger and had the whole ceiling of her house full of eggs, and 
hundreds of thousands of
midges, who danced in the air. There was the water-lily, who knew how beautiful she was, and who was
unsurpassed for self-conceit. Then there were the tadpoles, who were ever so many and ever so merry. 
And one only
had to take a drop of water and examine it under a magnifying glass to see how it swarmed with tiny little animals, who all 
danced about and ate one another without the least compunction.

THE BLADDER-WORT.

Just under the reed-warblers' nest there was a little May-fly grub, who was in a terrible state of 
fright. She had
entered into conversation with little Mrs. Reed-Warbler one day, when the latter had gone all the 
way down the reed
to find food for her youngsters who were simply insatiable and kept on
crying for  more. Just at that moment the May-fly grub had come up to the  surface; and now the 
bird's beak was
exactly over her.
"Let me live," said she.
"That's what they all say," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "My children have to live, too." So saying she 
tried to snatch her,
but the grub wriggled so, and looked so, queer that she could not.

THE BIRD'S BEAK WAS EXACTLY OVER HER.

"Listen to me for a moment," said the grub;
then I'm sure you won't hurt me. I am so small and so thin and fill so little space in a stomach."
"Well, what is it?" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"I have lived here a long time," said the grub.
"I have heard you talk to your husband and to the crayfish and the eel and the spider. What you said was all so beautiful that I am 
certain you have a good heart."
"I don't know about my heart," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "But I know I have five hungry children."
"I am a child myself," said the grub. " And I should so very much like to live till I grow up.
When I am grown up, I shall have wings and be able to fly like you."
"You don't surely imagine that you're a bird," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Oh, no! I certainly don't aim so high as that. I shall just become a May-fly."
" I know them," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. " I have eaten lots of them. They taste very good."
"Oh, well, in that case, do wait for me to grow
up before you eat me. I shall live for only a few hours, you know , when I get my wings. I shall just have time
to fly once round the pond and lay my
eggs, in the water. Then I must die; and then you may eat me, and welcome. But let me go now, and 
tell your
husband also; he has been after me twice."
"Very well," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, " though it's foolish of me. You'll probably cheat me and let 
someone else eat you first."
"I shall do my best to escape," said the grub. And, now, thank you ever so much."
 Before the grub had done speaking, little  Mrs. Reed-Warbler was up in the nest again, with six
midge-grubs, which she had caught in one bite. Her
husband was there too with a dragon-fly, which the
children tore to pieces and ate up amid cries  of delight.
"There's nothing the matter with their appetites or with their voices either," he said. "If only 
they
could shift for themselves!
 I am as lean as a skeleton. "
" And what about me?" said she. " Sometimes, when I feel thoroughly tired, I can almost understand 
those animals
that let their children look after themselves. Did you notice how fat and gay the eel is?"
"Are you talking of me, madam?" asked the eel, sticking his head out of the mud.
" Oh, have you any news of your children?" asked Mrs Reed-Warbler.
"No, thank goodness!"
"Oh, really ? " said the perch. "I have an idea that I ate a couple of them at breakfast. Excuse me for being so frank."
Not at all, not at all! " said the eel. " The family is large enough even so."
"How on earth did they come up here from the sea ?" asked the carp.
"Just as I did, I suppose," said the eel.
"They've got scent of something to be made here; and two or three miles are nothing to them."
"Heigh ho! " said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Are you sighing because of all this fuss with the children ? Well, madam, what did I tell you ? "
"One has one's duties," said Mr. Reed-Warbler. "And the loftier one's station, the heavier the duties."
"Thank goodness, then, that I am of lowly station," said the eel. "I have a capital time in the mud."
"Then again," said Mr. Reed-Warbler, "one likes to preserve a certain amount of poetry in the
world. There is plenty of rabble, plenty of
ugliness, which is all the more  reason why we higher animals should do something to promote the ideal.: And I can't imagine 
anything more ideal
than a father's labours on behalf of his family, even
though  they do at times become rather fatiguing."
"You're tremendously up in the clouds to-day," said the eel. "Every one to his taste. As for 
poetry, I must confess
that I. have not seen much of it in my life, although I have wriggled and twisted about the world a 
good deal. The
great question, everywhere, is eating and eating and eating; and those that have children to care for 
are the worst
robbers of the lot.  Good-bye."
" Disgusting fellow! " said Mrs. Reed-Warbler to her husband. " It was splendid of you to give him a 
piece of your
mind. I quite agree with you. I myself performed a rather fine deed to-day."
She ran to the reed and looked into the water. "Are you there, my little grub? " she asked.
"Yes, thank you," said the May-fly grub.
"And how are you ?"
"Fairly. The eel almost caught sight of me; and I was nearly getting into the bladder-wort's prison; 
and the water-spider was after me before  that. Otherwise, I'm all right."
"What's all this?" asked Mr. Reed-Warbler.
"Oh," answered his wife, "it's a May-fly grub, a little pet of mine. I promised her I  wouldn't eat 
her. She is so happy at
the thought of being grown up, and that only for a couple of hours, poor little thing!"
Mrs. Reed-Warbler said nothing about her intention of eating the grub when she was grown up.
"What sentimental rubbish! " said Mr. Reed-Warbler. "It's unseemly for a woman with five children to 
commit such
follies.".
"I thought it so poetical to give her leave to live," said she.
" Fiddlesticks!" said her husband. "Poetry doesn't apply to one's food. If it did, we should all die of 
hunger. Besides,
you can't take a creature like that into consideration."
Thereupon he ran down the reed and hunted eagerly for the grub to eat her. But she had  heard what he 
said and had gone down to the bottom with terror in her little heart.
-Adapted from " The Pond"  by CARL EWALD. (Thornton Butterworth, Ltd.)

THE COLOURED CARRIAGE.
His Majesty, the King of Krumpley, had a fine,
large and exciting-looking carriage. The cushions
on the seats were so soft one seemed to sink right
into them. There were tassels round the coachman's
box, and little step arrangements at the back for the
footmen. The horses' harness was better than a 
circus with tinkling bells, and feathery  plumes 
which waved as the carriage  bowled a long.
 In spite  of all these pleasant things, however
the King of Krumpley was unhappy about his
carriage. "Gold carriages are rather common, you
know,'' he said to the coachman. "Everyone has a
gold carriage - every king,  I mean. I should
have
a carriage quite different from any other carriage."
" Supposing we paint it red, Majesty?" suggested the coachman, who was rather handy with a paint 
brush, and didn't mind splashing paint about.
" Good idea! " said the King. " I am graciously pleased to be pleased. Let the carriage be painted 
red. " And the coachman went away to let it be painted red, which he found meant painting it red
himself. It also turned out to mean painting himself red here and there, because he was always rather 
free with the paint.
 "Lovely! " said the King, when he saw his carriage all gleaming scarlet. " That is what I call a 
most kingly carriage. Let me drive out in it."
He stepped in, and the coachman drove off. Tinkle, tinkle went the bells. Wiggle, waggle went the 
plumes. Cloppety-clop went the horses' hoofs. Zim, zim went the wheels. They had not gone far,
however, when round a corner burst another red carriage, even redder than the King's. And it had 
louder bells. It was a fire-engine. Hi-hi-hi, clang, clong!
 " Bother! " said the King trying to stamp his
foot, but finding he was too far sunk into the
cushions to do so. "Home at once, and let the
carriage be painted blue! I couldn't dream of
having a carriage the same colour as a fire-engine.
The very idea!"
Home they went; and the coachman was soon busy letting the carriage be painted blue, by 
painting it blue himself.
"Beautiful!" said the King when he saw it. "Much more royal looking than a mere red carriage! Drive 
me out in it!"
Off they drove, with a nice round blue smudge on the end of the coachman's nose; but, oh 
dear! they had not gone far when down the hill came roaring a most vivid blue carriage simply.
stuffed with policemen of all sizes. This carriage had no bells
to tinkle, but all the policemen were blowing whistles. Hi-hi-hi, whe-e---e! They were chasing a 
most dishonest gentleman who had stolen a pansy out of someone's front garden.
" Tut tut! " said the King. " This is dreadful! I simply cannot have my carriage the same colour as a 
policemen's van. People will think I have been arrested, or else they will stop me to ask the time. Home, coachman! Let the 
carriage be painted green."

IT WAS A FIRE-ENGINE.

In a day or two the royal carriage was a lovely
Green. So were both the coachman's ears and several of his whiskers.
"Delightful!" said the King. "Drive me out in it."
They were hardly outside the Palace gates, when
they were almost run into by a most brisk and bashy carriage also painted a beautiful green. This had no bells, no whistles were 
being blown, and there weren't any plumes. But there was a very loud 
little boy sitting on a lot of baskets at the back and making assorted faces at people as they shot
past. It was a laundry van.
" Disgraceful! " stormed the King, climbing out of the carriage so that he could stamp his foot on 
the pavement. " I refuse to have a carriage the colour of a laundry van. I shall be accused of
losing people's shirts. Everyone with a torn handkerchief will blame me. Let the carriage be painted 
purple. I will not have a carriage the same colour as anybody else's."
At last the royal carriage was painted purple, with the coachman to match it, because he was growing 
careless in sloshing the paint brush about. But, oh dear, tut, tut, and fancy now! The King
was just getting into the carriage when there passed by another purple carriage. This purple carriage 
had no horses, let alone bells or whistles or plumes. It was being pushed rapidly along by a
gentleman calling out that he wanted rags, bottles, and bones.
This was worse than ever. The King was so furious at having a carriage like a rag-and-bone man's 
cart that he stalked back to the Palace and wouldn't eat his tea.
" What colour next, Majesty? " asked the coachman, putting his head round the door.
"Dark black, with assorted spots! " shrieked the King, bringing his fist down on a bun, which 
happened to be a creamy kind of bun and shot a splodge of cream into his eye. "Let the carriage be
painted some colour it has not been yet," he commanded, "and if any other carriage is the same 
colour, off with your head!"
 "Dear, dear," thought the coachman, who was
tired of painting the  carriage any colour at all, but
definitely disliked the idea of having his head off.
"Now what, can I do?"
He went miserably back to the carriage house and stared at the carriage. Then his eye fell on the 
tins of paint he had been using and suddenly he had an idea - a silly idea, but still, an idea.
All that day the carriage house was firmly closed, and when the coachman came out he went off and had 
a highly special bath in different kinds of strong-smelling liquid to get the paint off himself.
"The carriage is ready, Majesty," he said, when he was fairly clean again.
" What colour? " asked the King.
" If Majesty will be graciously pleased to drive out in it, I think Majesty will be graciously 
pleased to be pleased," said the coachman. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, and he also
made his nose blue, for there was paint on his handkerchief where he had wiped his painty hands. 
The King stepped outside to see the carriage.
"Good gracious! " he exclaimed, and his eyebrows went up to different heights.
The carriage was neither red nor blue nor purple nor green nor yellow nor pink. And yet it was. Yes, 
it was all colours at once - in dots and squares and little stripes.  It was so highly coloured you
could almost hear it coming without the bells on the harness.
"Drive me out in it," commanded the King. Off they set, and although they met many a blue or red or 
green or purple carriage, not one single vehicle of any kind did they meet with so many
colours as the King's carriage.
" Splendid!" said the King. " I am pleased with you, and I shall give you a nice present."
The King's present turned out to be a nice new box of paints, but  the coachman was so tired of the
sight of paint, whether on himself or other things, that he took it 
secretly back to the shop and changed it for several
tins of toffee.
-NORMAN HUNTER, in "Blackie's Children's Annual." (Adapted.)

HENRY BARGERY.
Henry Bargery had all the faults of the ordinary boy, together with one or two of his own. 
He was restless, and thoughtless, and boisterous. He was given to horse-play, was fond of whistling and shouting, and was none 
too considerate of other people's nerves. Nor did he share his 
mother's love of soap.
His hands were often dirty, and his knees were seldom free from gravel-rash. He was as likely as not to 
come home with a hole
in his coat, or a rent in his pants, and the rate at which he wore out his shoes made his poor mother lift her hands in dismay.
His table manners were not all that one could wish. They lacked that restraint and refinement that all 
well-conducted young
people are supposed to display at their meals. He allowed it to be too
clearly seen that his appetite was large and urgent, and he saw nothing to be ashamed of in the fact he usually 
ate twice as
much beef and pudding as anybody else. Ready obedience did not come easy to him, nor were his habits 
orderly. It was just 
as hard to get him to bed at night as it was to get him up in the morning.
One of his habits was to put ordinary things to extraordinary uses. A chair, for instance, is supposed to 
be used for sitting,
and a table for holding things. Henry, however, preferred to sit on the table and rest his feet on a chair; and, if he sat on a chair at 
all, he chose a posture of his own. Either he straddled his legs across the seat and faced 
the back of the
chair, or else he sat on the seat in the ordinary way and tilted the chair back to see how far it would go 
without
overbalancing. Again, the street pavement is made flat and wide for 
the passing to and fro of pedestrians. It is a thing to be walked upon, and the kerb is merely its border. Henry, however, preferred 
walking on the kerb and pretending that it was a tight-rope, unless 
there was water in
the gutter, in which case he preferred the gutter.
Books, I regret to say, did not attract Henry    very much; nor did he take kindly to sitting at a desk and doing
school work. He, therefore, did  not stand high on the class list, and did not shine at examinations; 
and he gained no
prizes - except  in sports. There he really shone, as he also did in all forms of practical work, 
such as handicraft, and, at a later stage, experimental chemistry.
He was big and strong for his age, a fact of which he was very proud, and from which perhaps arose his 
love of
domineering. "Bossing" is what
his friends called it. He liked managing things and ordering other boys about. Since, however, he was a 
good leader, and
managed to get things done, the other boys did not much mind his masterful ways.
 In spite of his faults, Henry was on the whole
a favourite, except with a few grumpy people who
didn't like boys of any sort. He was a favourite
because he had virtues that outweighed his faults.
People liked him even for his appearance. In spite
of his grubby hands and untidy hair, he had a clean, 
sun-washed, open-air look about him, such as boys  
get at the seaside. It was no doubt his fair hair,
his blue eyes, his brown face, and above all his
sunny smile, that gave that impression.
It was plain to see that he was a well-meaning lad. He was not wild and obstreperous because, he 
wished to annoy
people, but because he could not help it. When it dawned upon him that his ways  did annoy people, 
he tried to
mend them, and sometimes, he nearly succeeded. When he grew  older he wholly succeeded.
Henry used to sleep in the attic, which he shared with his brother David. At half-past seven every morning his father would 
knock at his door and
say, " Henry, it is time to get up."
"All right, Dad," Henry would reply in a sleepy voice. Then he would turn over and go to sleep again. At 
eight o'clock his
father would open the bedroom door and find Henry still in bed. Then he would suddenly draw away the bedclothes and
pull Henry out of bed by the leg.
One day, when Henry had seated himself at the dinner table, his mother noticed that his hands were dirty 
and told him to
go and wash them in the bathroom. He felt inclined to argue the matter but, knowing from experience that 
arguments on this 
point were useless, he went up to the bathroom and filled the basin with water. But he couldn't find the soap. 
When he had
found the soap he did 
not know where the flannel was. After he had found the flannel he looked again for the soap and found that it had disappeared. 
After much
searching he saw that it had slipped down between
the bath and the wall.
He tried to reach the soap from above the bath, but his arm was too short, so he stooped down and tried to reach the soap from 
below. In his hurry he bumped his head badly against the bath. Muttering something under his breath, he 
got up, rubbed
his head, and resolved to wash his hands without soap.  He did so.
Then he returned to his dinner, but before he could begin his mother looked at his hands again. 
Then followed another excursion to the bathroom. This time Henry set to work systematically and raked 
out the soap
with a walking-stick. When he now returned to the dinner table there was a smile of triumph on his 
face. He sat down
and made up for lost time.
-Adapted extract from " The Bargerys," by P. B.  BALLARD. (University of London Press.)

AN OLD-TIME DETECTIVE STORY.
This story comes from the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha consists of a number of books of the Old Testament which, because they 
were not considered to be genuine, were removed from the Bible.]
Daniel was the most honoured friend of Cyrus, King
of Babylon. Now, the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day a large offering,
consisting of twelve great measures of fine flour, forty
sheep, and six vessels of wine, was made to him. 
The King worshipped Bel, and went daily to adore him; but Daniel worshipped his own God. The King one day 
said to
Daniel, "Why do not worship Bel? "
"Because," said Daniel, " I may not worship idols made with hands. I worship the living God, who created heaven 
and earth and
has sovereignty over all flesh."
"But," said the King, "do you not think that Bel is a living god? Do you not see how much he eats and drinks every day? "
Daniel smiled and said, "O King, do not be deceived. This god is only clay within and brass
without, and he neither eats nor drinks."
The King was angry. He called for his priests and said, "If you are not telling me the truth about 
who it is that eats
these expensive offerings, you shall die. If, however, you can prove to me that it is Bel that 
devours them, then Daniel
shall die, for he has spoken blasphemy against Bel."
Daniel said to the King, " Let it be as you say."
 Now, the priests of Bel were seventy in number, 
and there were besides their wives and children.
The King and Daniel met the priests in the temple
of Bel and the priests said, " We shall leave the temple while you, O King, set out the offerings.
Then shut fast the door and seal it with your
own signet. To-morrow, when you come in, if you
do not find that Bel has eaten everything, we will
suffer death. Otherwise, let Daniel die, who has
spoken falsely against us."
The priests of Bel were not disturbed, for under the table they had made a secret entrance by which they 
always came,
and they it was who consumed the offerings of flour, meat, and wine.
When they had gone, the King set the meats before Bel. Now, Daniel had ordered his servants to bring 
a supply of
ashes, and these they lightly strewed over the floor of the temple, in the presence of the King and 
Daniel. Then they
all went out, shut the door, sealed it with the King's signet, and so departed.
During the night the priests with their wives and children came, as was their custom, and ate and drank everything that was set 
out.
Early next morning the King arose, and with Daniel went to the temple.
" Are the seals whole, Daniel?" asked the King.
" Yes, O King, they are whole."
And, as soon as he had opened the door, the King looked at the table. Then he cried in a voice, " Great art thou, O Bel, and with 
thee is no deceit at all."
Daniel laughed. He held the King back from going 
in and said, "Look at the pavement, and mark well whose footsteps those are."
The King looked at the ash-strewn floor and said, "I see the footsteps of men, women, and children."
And then the King was angry. The priests were summoned and were forced to reveal the secret door. And that was the end of the 
temple of Bel.

A BOY'S HOLIDAY.
I was sixteen or seventeen years old, and lived  in Cardiff, when I had my first holiday. My elder  
brother and I had been saving up for a long time,  and at last a week's holiday could be achieved. We decided to go to Bideford*, 
because somebody we knew had been there and had given us the name of a 
sensationally cheap boardinghouse. We had written and arranged to pay twelve-and-six a week each,
to cover everything. We were to share a bed, but as we had always done so, that was no hardship.
When, however, we had saved the twelve-and-six each, and a few shillings each for expenses when we got there, the question 
remained of getting to Bideford. Now, it is one of the joys of newspaper life 
that newspaper men can get many things for nothing.  We were both working in a newspaper office, and 
the office possessed a pass that permitted free travel on the paddle steamers plying
between Cardiff and Ilfracombe. We were allowed the use of the pass, but there still remained the railway
journey from Ilfracombe to Bideford and back. My brother settled that heroically. "We'll walk it." It is something like twenty 
miles.
On a cloudless day in June we set out on that
holiday. We had no appropriate clothes. We wore
stuffy city clothes that were all we had. All that we took with us that far-off June day was
crammed into a great tin portmanteau - food, overcoats, books and goodness knows what - and in the brave 
spirit of youth we proposed to carry that
portmanteau twenty miles!
Blue and lovely was the sea at Ilfracombe,
darkening to green at the foot of Capstone Hill,
grown so thick with valerian that a single sprig of the plant brings back the moment to me:

* Pronounced Biddy-ford.

the gulls wheeling and crying, and the paddles making  a 
noisy, frothy
dither as we edged in to the pier We humped that monstrous trunk ashore and then we ate the lunch 
that we had
brought with us.  We did not dream of spending our precious savings on restaurants. And when we had 
eaten we
began to walk to Bideford.
It was about one o'clock and the sun was at its powerful height. The noon of the day, and the noon of the year, that trunk, and 
twenty miles to go!
We did not carry the trunk to Bideford! How could we have dreamed of it? We were skinny, strengthless 
boys. We did
our best. We sweated along between hedgerows dripping with honeysuckle and ditches where the 
meadowsweet
made a creamy foam. There were no tarmac roads then. Our shoes kicked up the pitiless dust. We took 
turns with
the trunk. We carried it at times between us. At times we dumped it and subsided into the hedge among 
the ragged-robins and the foxgloves.
Never once did we complain. We were on our first holiday, and neither of us would admit that there 
was any flaw in
the loveliness of the time we were having. No complaint, but at last from my brother a complete 
admission: " We can't do it."
It was true. We couldn't do it. We dumped the old trunk again and turned out our pockets. Each set 
aside his twelve-and-six and considered what was left. We could take the train, but it    would mean that those small 
diversions we
had promised ourselves must all be abandoned.
On we went again till we came to the next village at which the train stopped. We had walked about ten 
miles. When
we reached Bideford we carried the trunk up to our lodgings in a back street. A supper of shepherd's pie was 
waiting for us. It was brought in by a stout, kind girl who said we looked very tired and that she hoped we would 
enjoy our holiday. We
were tired. We  went straight to bed by candle-light. Neither of us had ever spent a night away from 
home before, and that
bare little bedroom in a quiet back street, with the candle-light flickering on a steel engraving of Jael 
driving the nail into
the head of Sisera,  seemed uncanny, cold, and dubious. My brother read his Bible, as he always did at 
night right up to the
time when he died soon afterwards on a ship at sea; and I lay on my back looking across the thin outline of 
his chest
against the yellow
candle-shine to the dark eyes of Jael.
Long before breakfast the next morning we were on the quay, looking right towards the many arches of the 
lovely bridge
and left towards the estuary. Behind us was the "Rose," the inn that has its place in "Westward Ho!" and before us
were the shining sands where Amyas Leigh fought his duel. I had brought "Westward Ho! " with me. I 
have never read
it since, but I am prepared to defend it as a grand romance. Every stone and tree, the pebble ridge on the 
near-by shore, the 
estuary sand and the boats in the river, all conspired to paint bright pictures of Amyas and Salvation  Yeo
and all the others
going about their high and
mighty business.
No, I do not want to read it again and I do not want to go to Bideford again. It is now a place in a 
dream, far off but very
bright, and I fear what I should find if I put it to the touch of waking. I should not find the tree in 
which I sat all through a
summer day. We had taken food with us, and we found the tree on the edge of a field that was being mown. I 
climbed into
it, and with my legs along a bough and my back to the trunk I read and read, peeping out through the leafy screen now to a blue 
vision of the estuary, now at my brother who was reading " Henry 
Esmond " at the tree's foot, now at the swarthy men whose scythes
advanced with a rasping rhythm through the standing grass. That afternoon I read in " Westward Ho! ": 
" And beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face,"
and that led me on to Wordsworth.
Of the brief holiday that day remains for ever, and whatever modern villas may now adorn the hill, my 
men for ever swing their scythes and my brother reads on in a green shade.
Wherever our legs could take us we wandered that week: out to Northam where, beneath grey, crooked 
stones, the graves of drowned mariners are green; to Appledore
and Instow, which come back to me now, standing above the pearly iridescence of the estuary at flood 
with the intangible grace and mystery of a water-colour by Wilson
Steer; to the old Army and Navy college which we found deserted and open to any intruder. We looked 
about its rooms, seeking on door or wall some scrawled " R.K."
which might testify to the sojourn there of Stalky's creator. But we found nothing.
All through the week we spent hardly a shilling, but I doubt whether I shall ever again know a 
holiday so mightily endowed with wonder and refreshment. All too soon we
were back. On my
way home from work each day thereafter, I would glimpse my face in shop mirrors, admiring its tan, 
then regretting that the tan was passing like the holiday itself. Soon
nothing was left - except this which, long years after, I have been able to set down.
Since then what holidays there have been! But none like that. None that has left a place-name so magic in my ears as Bideford is 
to this day.
-Adapted extract from "Heaven lies about Us," by HOWARD SPRING. (Constable.)

GRANDMA AND THE WORMS.
I heard the raised voices of my two grandsons
outside, and shrill protests from Michael, so I went out to them, bent on peace-making.
" What's the matter, Michael? "
" He's taken my worms! " and Michael burst into tears.
" They're not his worms! They're mine!" cried Conrad indignantly.
" Eight of them are mine," sobbed Michael. "Eight long long ones. I dug them up myself."
" Boys," said I, " why quarrel over a few worms? There must be simply thousands about the place."
" It's terribly hard work digging for them," said Conrad, mopping a heated brow with what had once 
been, I dare say, a
clean handkerchief.
"Where are the worms? " I asked a trifle anxiously, for I had had some experience of worm crises.
" In here," answered Conrad, holding up a large toffee-tin.
"Is that full of worms?" said I, keeping at a safe distance.
" Quite full; there was no more room. Michael couldn't have got his in."
"There was! I could! I did! I squashed them down with the lid!" and Michael wiped his eyes with the back of a wormy hand.
This was too much for me. Even a worm will turn.
"Michael," I said with some sternness, "you mustn't be cruel, even to worms."
"Worms don't mind, Granny," he replied.
"But the trout do," cried Conrad. " How would you like a squashed worm if you were a trout?"
" I'd love it," said Michael defiantly.
" Conrad, " I interposed hastily, "you won't need all those worms, will you? "
" I don't know," he answered. " I might. It depends on the trout. And Michael had no right to put his worms in my tin."
"I haven't a tin of my own," said Michael
"Let him have his worms," said I. "Would you know yours again, Michael?"
"Yes," he asserted stoutly. "Besides, they're on the top."
" As if they'd stay there! " said Conrad. "And if they did, you've squashed them."
At this gruesome suggestion, Michael again showed signs of tears, so I said, "Don't cry, Michael. You 
can pick your
own worms out of the
tin. They may have survived the squashing.
One never can tell with worms."
Michael cheered up, and the two boys went off to the garden seat to divide the spoil. Relieved that the
quarrel seemed at an
end, I followed slowly,  meditating on worms and their reactions on boys. If I had been wearing my 
spectacles I would
have been more careful. I sat down. There was a yell from 
both boys.
"Granny," cried Michael furiously, "you've sat
my best worm. Who's cruel now?"
Too late I saw the revolting wriggling mass that they had emptied on to the seat. I was paralysed with 
horror - when
Conrad shouted from underneath the seat: " It's all right. I've got him, Michael! He must have 
slipped through the
space between the planks." Then emerging: " You've had 
an escape, old chap," he continued, holding up a 
long and particularly unpleasant specimen and regarding it with affectionate admiration.
"Are you quite sure he's yours, Michael? " I asked.
" Yes, I am, " said the young man with decision. "I know him by his tail."
"Bosh!" said Conrad. "You don't know his
tail from his head. They both wriggle."
"Yes, I do," and Michael carefully picked out seven more worms, examined each one critically, and 
then shoved it
into the pocket of his blue jeans. Having barely recovered from the last shock, I
viewed this gesture with disgust. " Michael," I said firmly, "go and ask your mother for a tin. I do not think she would like you to 
keep worms in your pocket."
" Why not? " asked Michael.
I had no ready answer, and Michael, marched off, leaving Conrad gloating over the loathsome heap on the seat. He began to 
count them, dropping them with loving
deliberation one by one into the tin with a soft sickening plop.
" Lovely worms, aren't they, Granny?" he remarked. " I ought to catch some big fish."
The lunch bell rang.
Alas! This is not the end.
A few days later I was coming along the passage where the household hangs its coats and oilskins. I sniffed. A very 
unpleasant smell seemed to be coming from the row of
coats. I went along them, sniffing as I went, and halted just where I caught a glimpse of blue between two coats - Michael's blue 
jeans! I took them gingerly off their hook, and holding them at arm's length with my face turned away, I called Michael.
He came, his face round and smiling. I handed him his jeans.
"Smell that!" I said sternly.
He sniffed. "What a lovely smell!" and he sniffed again with evident delight.
" Feel in the pocket! "
He put in his hand and his face beamed.
"It's my worms," he cried joyfully. "I forgot where I'd put them! " and he pulled out - something at which I dared not look.
"I'm afraid," he said regretfully, "the trout won't like them, now. They've been too long dead."
"What about burying them? " I suggested.
"Granny! " he exclaimed in shocked tones "That would be waste! I know, I'll give them to  the ducks. They won't mind the 
deadness."
And he did.
-Adapted from "Punch".

DEPTH CHARGES.
"LAST ONE, THEN I'LL BE THE U-BOAT."

THE CANNIBALS.
(A NONSENSE STORY.)
Once when Mr. Jimble was in Africa, where he used to go sometimes to shoot 
lions and tigers and hippopotamuses,
he ran across some cannibals whom he had not expected. The black boys that 
had been carrying him in a hammock
ran away, and all the others too, so that he was left alone with the 
cannibals. They wrapped him up in the hammock
so that he could breathe all right, but couldn't use his arms or his legs; 
and the chief said, "Now, that is very lucky,
because we haven't had a white man to eat for a long time, and it will be a 
treat and a change of diet."
Mr. Jimble said, " Yes, that's right, but I suppose you will feed me up 
first, won't you ? I'm rather thin through taking
so much exercise lately in this heat, and I am afraid you would find me 
rather stringy."
Well, the chief was surprised at hearing him talk in his own language, 
and asked him how he had learned it.  "Oh," said Mr. Jimble, "I've always been interested in languages, and I 
learnt it at Oxford. I wish you would tell
somebody to untie me; I will promise not to run away."
The chief told his men to untie Mr. Jimble, and he said, "Come into my 
kraal, and we can have a nice talk."
 They went into the kraal, which was rather smelly, but Mr. Jimble was glad to get out of the sun. 
There was a little
boy there, and Mr. Jimble  
said to the chief, "I suppose that  is your little boy; where does he go to school ? "
"Well, he doesn't go anywhere," said the chief, "but I should like him to go to school and learn 
English. Where would
you recommend? "
Mr. Jimble said: " Well, I was at Eton myself, and it is a very good school. If you like, I will give you a letter to the headmaster."

THE CHIEF'S LITTLE BOY.  

" Oh, thank you," said the chief. " I will remind you of that before we eat you. I suppose they would 
let him have his
own diet at Eton. I could send over some of my tribesmen that I don't want for him to eat, if they 
don't care about
providing white people for him."
Mr. Jimble said, " Well, you would have to make your own arrangements about that; and now, what 
about eating
me? If you like, I will tell you exactly how to feed me so that I will taste nice when I am choked; 
and, if you take my
advice, you will have me boiled and not roasted, because I shall be more of a delicacy like that."
"Oh, yes," said the chief, " we can easily manage that. There is a river not far off, and we can dig a 
hole here and bring
water for it in gourds."
 "Dig the hole at once," said Mr. Jimble, " and fill it with hot water every evening, and I can get 
into it before having
dinner. Then I shall be easier to boil when the time comes."
The chief did that, and Mr. Jimble showed them how to dig a hole the shape of a bath, and every 
evening he had a
nice hot bath in it. He also made them bring him all sorts of nice things to eat, and told them how 
to cook them,
because he said he wanted to taste as nice as possible when they ate him.
Well, the chief grew quite friendly with him, and he said, " I am sure I am very much obliged for all 
the trouble you are
taking. The last white man we caught made such a fuss that it was quite unpleasant."
 " I don't believe in making a fuss about anything," said Mr. Jimble, " and I am very pleased to 
oblige you."
" I am sure you will taste delicious," said the chief. "When will you be ready?"
 Mr. Jimble said, " Well, I have been thinking
about that. Have you ever heard about escoffier
sauce? " The chief said he had not. "Well, if
you like," said: Mr. Jimble, " I will buy you some
to go with me. I will send a letter to a friend of mine in Cape Town with some money in it. One of
your cannibals must run as fast as he can with the
letter and bring back the sauce, and when he comes
back you can serve me up as soon as you like."
The chief did that, and when the cannibal had gone with the letter, the chief often used to talk 
about the treat they
were going to have, and he said, " I wish you were going to be there, because
I have come quite to like you; but I don't see how it can be managed."
The cannibal was a long time away, and the chief began to grow rather impatient.  Then Mr. Jimble 
said, "I'll tell you
what I will do to pass the time: I will prepare your little boy for Eton, because he will have to pass 
an examination to
get in, and he must know some English as well as Latin and arithmetic and other things. I could 
teach him to play
cricket, too."
 Mr. Jimble did that, and the chief's little boy soon learned to talk English; and they made some 
balls out of some
light wood, and some cricket bats and wickets and bails, and all the cannibals wanted to play 
cricket, too, when they
saw it. Mr. Jimble taught them, and he made up two very good elevens and gave them different colours, 
and they
used to play matches. That went on for nearly two months.
Then one morning a cannibal came running up and said that there were a lot of white soldiers all 
round them, with
guns, and asked what they had better do. The chief saw it was no good trying to run away, and he was 
very
frightened. Mr. Jimble, however, said he would talk to the soldiers, and that they wouldn't do 
anything if the chief and
all the cannibals kept quiet.
He went out and said to the captain of the soldiers,  " Well, you got my letter. I am glad you came. 
I don't think you 
need kill any of these people unless you particularly want to. They are quite decent really 
except that they are cannibals."
"Well," said the captain, "they will have to leave off being cannibals, or I will take them all 
prisoners and I will
have the chief shot."
Mr. Jimble told the chief what the captain had said. The chief was quite surprised, and said it was 
the first he had
heard of there being anything wrong in being a cannibal.
He asked Mr. Jimble why he
had not told him before. " Well, for one thing," said Mr. Jimble, " I didn't 
want to hurt your
feelings, and besides you might have thought I was only  telling  you that to save myself  from 
being eaten."
 Thus, it all ended happily, and Mr. Jimble went
back to England. He was glad he had not been
eaten by the cannibals, but he had had to tell a good
many lies to save himself, and he didn't feel quite
comfortable about that. He therefore added up all
he could  remember of the lies he had told, and gave
half a crown for each one to a charity.
Before long the chief died from indigestion, and his little boy became chief in his place. It had 
fallen through about his
going to Eton, but he had learnt a little Latin, and he could add up pounds, shillings, and pence, 
and he was the best
cover-point in the tribe, so he made quite a good chief.
-	Adapted from "Simple Stories from 'Punch'," by ARCHIBALD MARSHALL.
HOW MUCH LAND?
[Pokhom was a Russian farmer, very greedy for land. After increasing the size of his farm several times, he went on a journey to 
the country of the Bashkirs, where he had been told one could buy a great tract of fertile land for a thousand crowns. He met the 
chief elder of the Bashkirs, who said that they were willing to sell him land, and the price was a thousand roubles a day.]
Fixing the price of land at so much a day took
Pokhom by surprise, and he was unable to make any immediate answer. At last he
asked, "How many acres does that make?"
" It is impossible to say exactly beforehand,"
 said the chief elder. "All the land you can walk
round in a day will become your property. And the price for the day is a thousand roubles."
In his bewilderment Pokhom could only reply, "You can walk round a lot of land in a day."
"No matter how much it is, it will be yours on one condition: by the end of the day you must be 
back where you started from, otherwise your money will be forfeited."
"Who will stake out the boundary as I pass along? " Pokhom asked.
" You may select the places where you would like boundary stakes fixed," said the chief elder. "Some of our younger men will 
accompany you on horseback, and put in the stakes for you."
This seemed a very satisfactory arrangement to Pokhom, and it was settled that he would start at 
sunrise the following morning.
At dawn next morning a party of Bashkirs, including the chief 
elder, went with Pokhom and his servant to the steppes. Just  before the sun peeped above the horizon they reached the summit of 
a hillock.  The chief elder pointed to the wide spreading
plains before them, and said to Pokhom, "All that belongs to us - everything your eye can take in. Make 
your choice."
In Pokhom 's eyes there was a sudden gleam. Right away to the distant horizon the land extended 
luxuriant with grass, flat as the palm of his, hand, dark as poppy-seed. Herbage of every description, some of it as high as a man, 
indicated the hollows.
The chief elder took off his fur cap and placed if on
the ground, on the very summit of the hill.
 "Here, " he said, "is   your mark.
Your servant
shall remain beside it. Put your money in the
 hat. From here you must start, and here you must return.
 All the land within the circuit you make
will become your property."
Pokhom placed the thousand roubles in the hat.
Then he removed his outer coat, retaining his tunic,  
and tightened his waistband. He had provided
himself with a small bag of dried grain, and a gourd
full of water was slung over his shoulders. When he
had given his boots a final hitch he was quite ready
to start. Deciding to go east, he looked at the sky,
stretched his limbs, and waited for the sun to rise.
"I must not lose any time," he reflected. "Walking is less trying during the cool hours of the morning."
He was soon in the very heart of the steppes, the horsemen following him. He walked at an even pace 
neither too fast nor too slow, and at the end of the first mile a stake was put in. Then on
again. As his legs grew accustomed  to the exercise he somewhat increased his  pace.
 He kept on steadily and, after what he estimated
to be another mile, he had another stake fixed. He glanced behind him. The hill, lit up by the full glow
of the rising sun, stood out clearly.   The little group
of Bashkirs on the summit was plainly distinguishable. When Pokhom had covered about three miles
he removed his tunic. The day promised to be
warm; already the heat was trying. He gave his
waistband another hitch, and walked on for another
three miles.
The beat was now growing oppressive. Pokhom raised his eyes to the sun; and saw it was time he broke 
his fast. " Here I am," he mused, " at the end of the first quarter of my day. It is not
yet time to turn. I think, though, it will be better if I take off my boots." He took of his 
boots, and once more resumed his march. "Another three miles or so, and I will then turn left. The 
land
about
here is far too good to be left out. The farther I go, in fact, the better the land seems to 
become."
And so Pokhom kept straight ahead. After a time he again glanced behind him. This time the hill was 
barely visible, and the Bashkirs on the top of it looked more like ants than men. 
" Ah! " sighed Pokhom, " I have got something like a bit of land now! But I must really decide to 
turn."
Sweat was pouring down his face, and he was very thirsty. Still walking, he took a long draught from 
his gourd. Then he left the Bashkirs to fix another stake and he turned sharply to the left.
On went Pokhom in the new direction.  The grass was high and thick, and the heat intense. Pokhom was beginning to feel very 
tired. He glanced upward at the sun. It was time he had dinner.
A short rest would do him good. He stopped, opened his bag, and ate standing. He was afraid to sit 
down, lest he should stretch out full length and fall asleep. After a few minutes he drew a long
breath, and was off again.
The food had invigorated him, and at first he went ahead with comparative ease; but the heat became 
well-nigh unbearable, and his desire to sleep was almost invincible. To gain courage he
muttered to himself the proverb: " An hour's suffering for a century of joy."
 He managed to cover another four miles. Then,
as  he was on the point of turning once more to the
left, he was struck by the wonderfully luxuriant
look of the hollow straight ahead. " It will never
do to leave that out of my domain. What a crop
 of flax I shall have there!" He continued to
advance. A stake was fixed on the other side of
the hollow; and then Pokhom turned.
 Once more he looked back toward the hill. The
 little group of Bashkirs could  now be discerned only
 with difficulty. Ten miles at least separated Pokhom from them.
"I have made the first two sides rather long," he said; " this side must be shorter."
His pace in spite of his weariness was now considerably increased. The sun was nearing the horizon; very soon now it would 
reach the end of its day's journey; yet Pokhom had covered little more
than a mile of the third side. He was still a good ten miles from his goal.
"There is no help for it," he sighed. "I must make straight for the hill now. My land
will be a very queer shape, but that cannot be helped. I shall have quite enough."
He set his face towards the goal. Straight for the hill went Pokhom. His distress
was great. His feet, swollen and bruised, were terribly painful, and his legs gave way under him.
"What will, become of me if I do not reach the
goal  in time?," he asked himself. " How far have I still to go?  If only my feet did not hurt so! Am I going to 
lose both my money and my toil? 
Pokhom began to run. He threw away the gourd, his cap and boots. " Alas! " he lamented, greed has been my undoing."
Unable to breathe properly, he kept on running His mouth was parched; his shirt and trousers, soaked with sweat, clung to 
him; his chest rose and fell like a blacksmith's bellows; his heart was
pounding hard. No longer could he feel his feet;
his ankles were giving way; he was done for!
The land and everything else was forgotten. His sole dread was that he might drop down dead from exhaustion. As he raced 
along, he was saying to himself, " Think what a fool you will look if you
stop running now! " He could hear the Bashkirs
whistling and shouting, and this made him more determined not to give in. Putting forth all his strength, he made a final 
effort. The goal was near, but the sun was getting lower and lower.
Each man could be seen now on the top of the
hill. He could even see the cap on the ground,
containing the  money. He raised his eyes to the sun. The great red disk was almost touching the horizon. Now it had 
touched it. Another brief moment, and the lower half was hidden. Then,
just as Pokhom reached the hill, the last glowing crescent slipped out of sight. With a cry of despair Pokhom told himself 
that all was lost. But no!
there was still a last chance. Though the sun was gone from the bottom of the hill, it must still be visible to those on the 
summit.
Using his last ounce of strength, he bounded up the hill. There was the cap! Victory! He lost his footing and slipped, but as he 
fell his outstretched hand touched the cap.
 "Bravo!  Bravo! " shouted the  chief elder of the Bashkirs. " You have won a fine estate."
Pokhom's servant rushed forward; he wanted to help his master to rise, but he noticed a little stream of blood trickling form his 
mouth. Pokhom was dead!
With a laugh and a jeer, the Bashkirs mounted their horses and rode off, leaving the servant to bury his dead master's body.
-	Adapted from Tolstoi's "Partables."

ONE WITCH TO ANOTHER
My dear, I can't think how you manage without one.

A SWEDISH SCHOOL STORY. 
[Our story is a chapter from " Flaxen  Braids," the tale of Kristin, a little Swedish girl of the nineteenth century. Kristin grew up 
to be the mother of the author of "Flaxen Braids."]
 There were two little girls in the sawmill village
who were never late for school. One was Magister
Olson's daughter, Ebba. Magister Olson was the
schoolmaster,  and school could not begin until he
had finished his breakfast, said grace, put on his
black frock coat and, with Ebba at his heels, crossed
the hall to his schoolroom.  The other little girl was
Kristin. Magister Olson could not eat his breakfast
until Kristin tapped at his door and handed Ebba a wooden bucket full of Tacka's milk, Tacka being 
Kristin's father's
cow.
It took Magister Olson fully half an hour to eat his breakfast. In that half-hour, Kristin crossed 
the hall to the big
schoolroom and found her place on one of the long backless benches. Each morning she took out her 
books from the
narrow desk running the length of the bench, but she could never study for long. Knut, the boy who made the fires in the tall 
enamel stove, was often there before her. The others soon followed.
As soon as the " order-men " arrived, everyone became very quiet. The order-men were two of the older 
pupils, being
appointed for one week. It was their duty to keep order in the hall and stairway, and even on the way 
home; but the
duty they liked best was to watch the others until Magister Olson came in the morning. They stood 
near the platform,
chalk in hand, and, if a pupil whispered or turned round, the order-men wrote up his name on the blackboard.
Kristin's name never appeared on the blackboard. She sat as still as if she were carved in marble. 
Now and then her
brother Anders' name went up. Sometimes Kristin felt this was just, for Anders was not by any means 
the best
behaved boy in school. Often, however, she suspected that the order-men in this way settled old 
quarrels begun the
night before on the way home from school.
To-day Kristin had a special interest in what was going on. Anders was one of the order-men. Anders 
had washed
with extra care and had borrowed Father's grey plaid cravat, which crept up now about his throat and 
made him look very fine indeed  as he stood on Kristin's side of the room, near the platform, chalk in 
hand.
It was Magister Olson's ruling that every pupil must keep  his hands folded on
top of the desk at all times, unless he was holding a book or writing.
As the desks were high, this was very tiresome.
" To-day," thought Kristin, " I may surely drop my
hands to my lap for a moment, since Anders is
order-man."
Kristin looked along her seat, and there was Gideon, the postmaster's son. He had red hair and a snub 
nose and
great pink ears. He did not like either Kristin or Anders. He had said so. Last week when he was 
order-man he had
written Anders' name on the blackboard. Gideon was now studying his history. He hung forward over the 
desk, his
tongue between his teeth, learning the paragraphs by heart. How Kristin's arms ached! The more she 
thought about
putting her hands in her lap, the more her arms ached, At last she thought she could bear it no 
longer. Very quietly
she laid down her " Nature Reader " and let her hands slide to her lap. Then she looked at Anders. 
Yes, he had seen
her. He looked away quickly.
The next moment a book fell with a loud thump, and Kristin saw Gideon, with a flourish of his 
wrists, put his hands in
his lap too! Kristin was so much taken by surprise that she sat staring, while Anders, his face like 
a thunder-cloud,
wrote up the names of both the culprits, large and clear, on the blackboard.
Kristin thought she should die of shame.  She had never before been punished in school. She hastily 
put her hands
back on the desk. Then she shrank and shrank until she hoped Magister Olson would not be able to see 
her when he
entered.
How still the schoolroom was when the schoolmaster opened the door at the back! He cleared his throat 
and watched
the sixty heads bent over their
books. Then he marched down the aisle, his hands clasped behind him, Ebba at his heels. How 
majestic he was
with his solemn face, his greying side-whiskers, his shiny black coat which reached to his knees and 
in which he
walked so straight and tall!  Ebba slipped into her place. The master stopped before one blackboard.
" Dear me! " he said. " Dear me! " and he began reading off the names on the other blackboard.
"Adolph! Bengt! Olaf ! " 
Kristin shrank smaller and smaller as Adolph and Bengt and Olaf marched up and answered the 
master's
questions. " What have you done? " he asked, glaring down at each one. The three boys had the same 
answer: "Just nothing, sir."
"Then take that - and that - and that! " The schoolmaster's short  black ferule cracked sharply over 
Adolph's knuckles, 
over Bengt's, over Olaf's.
" Now he will turn to the other blackboard," thought Kristin  with a shiver. The master scowled 
when he saw the
names Anders had written up.
"So! " he said. " Gideon and Kristin! " 
Gideon climbed out of his place briskly. Kristin's eyes were full of tears. She stumbled over the 
bench and walked
with head down and feet dragging, up to face the master.
"What have you done ?"
"Just nothing, sir," said Gideon. Crack! went the ferule.
 Kristin raised her head slowly. "I put my hands in my lap for just a minute, " she said in a
small voice.
"Hmmm! Do you not know it  is forbidden ?"
"Yes, sir." She  held out her hand.  The ferule came down lightly. "It must not happen again," said 
Magister Olson.
His voice was not gruff and harsh now. He laid the ferule on the desk. "We will sing," he cried. " Take 
out your singing-books!"
In the hurry and confusion, Kristin crept back to her place and, while she searched for her 
speckled-brown singing-book, she wiped her eyes.
" First we shall sing 'King Karl, the Young Hero,'" said Magister Olson. When the song was finished he 
smiled and
nodded, well pleased. He chose song after song. 

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

He pumped the little black organ and bounced and kept time with his head. At last he sighed and closed the singing-book. A 
heaviness fell on the room. Now there was no more fun---only history and reading and sums, geography and writing and 
grammar.
Behind her  geography, Ebba looked at Kristin and smiled. Kristin knew well what the  smile meant. 
It meant, " I
was so sorry, but Papa is not
so bad after, all, is he ? " Kristin would have liked to smile back, but she did not.
Kristin did not want to look at Anders when she marched down the stairs past him at "rest" time. She 
knew that
Anders felt as unhappy over the morning's disgrace as she did. In the square ugly yard below the 
schoolroom, they
played blindbock and a weaving game. In the weaving game, Gideon chose Kristin for his partner, and 
held her hand
so hard that she could not pull away.
" That was a good joke we played on Anders," he said.
Kristin would not answer. She did not think it had been very funny, and she did not mean to be on 
Gideon's side
against Anders.
"Anders did not want to put your name on the board, you may be sure," Gideon said; "but he must pay 
me back for
what I did to him last week. I am going to walk home with you after school. We shall see what Anders 
has to say to
that."
Kristin waited anxiously for the afternoon dismissal bell. She wondered what Anders would do. Gideon 
was stronger
and heavier than Anders even if he was not much taller. When school was out, Anders guided his little 
group of pupils down the
street. Kristin stayed close to her brother. Gideon stayed close to Kristin. When they came to the 
street leading to
the sawmills, Kristin left the others. Anders must go on till he had seen that the rest reached 
home safely. Gideon
turned his head and looked after Kristin. He halted, but Anders said sharply, "Take heed,  Gideon!" 
Gideon went on.
Kristin reached home and had supper, and
Mother and Father went to work on the night-shift
at the mill. It was almost six before Anders came
home. He no longer looked washed and neat; his shirt was torn and the grey plaid cravat was missing.
 " Anders! " cried Kristin. "Have you been fighting? Oh, Anders! "
Anders grunted. " I have taught Gideon to respect me, if that is what you mean," he said. He ate his 
supper in a great
hurry, milked Tacka, the cow, and fed her and Lovisa, the pig. Kristin swept the floor, washed up, 
and put Baby Anna
to bed. Anders was so cross that she did not dare to ask him what had happened, or who had won the 
battle. She
took her knitting and sat down by the window.
Then she saw a man coming along the street and looking at the numbers on the doors. "Anders! " 
Kristin cried in a
shrill whisper. "Is this Gideon's father, the postmaster? "
Anders was across the room in a leap. "That's who it is, and he's coming here."
" Oh, Anders," cried Kristin, looking about her wildly. " Hide! There! In the woodbox! I'll pile some 
wood over you! "
Anders jumped into the box, and Kristin, as best she could, covered him with wood, and then she 
hurried to the
door.
" Is your papa at home? " asked the postmaster, looking round the room as he entered.
" No," said Kristin, twisting her apron in her fingers.
" Hmmm. I have a letter here, but I cannot understand how it can be for you. Have you friends in 
America ?"
"Oh no," said Kristin. She was so anxious about Anders, and about what the postmaster had really 
come for, that
she could not think of anyone who could be writing from America. Every now and then the postmaster looked about him sharply.
Kristin thought he stared longest at the woodbox. She wondered if Anders' yellow head was sticking up 
through the
wood, but she did not dare to look.
" So! Well, it is from America, and it is addressed to you. You are Kristin, are you not?"
"To me? " cried Kristin. "Oh, it is from Jenny! "
"Who is Jenny? " asked the postmaster.
"Jenny got married and went to America. She gave me my doll! " said Kristin, and she took the letter 
in her hands.
She turned it over and over. She had never written a letter nor received one. She had never seen a 
foreign stamp. And
here she was with a letter from America, all her very own. She could not thank the postmaster enough.
"No, no, no , do not thank me. Open it! Open it! Let us see what is in it," the postmaster cried 
heartily.
But that Kristin could not do. "I must keep it just as it is a while," she said. "I do not want to 
spoil if by opening it too
soon."
The postmaster had never heard such nonsense. He rose to go. Just then a bumping noise came from the 
woodbox.
Kristin jumped.
"Oh yes, this I very nearly forgot. Your papa will need it when he goes to church next Sunday." And 
the
postmaster drew from his pocket Father's grey plaid cravat.
Kristin held out her hand for it without a word. Another bumping noise came from the woodbox. A piece of wood slid down.
"My boy, Gideon," said the postmaster, "came home with it round his neck." He smiled. Then he raised 
his voice and
added, "You may come out of the woodbox now, Anders. I am going home."
-	Abridged from "Flaxen Braids," by ANNETTE TURNGREN. (Nelson.)

A HARD CLIMB AND THE SEQUEL.
[John Ridd tells the story of a boyhood fishing expedition in the streams 
of Exmoor. Not having had any luck in the Lynn stream, he decided to venture up Bagworthy water, which flowed through a 
secluded district, where lived the
Doones, a band of robbers. ]
I put the bag round my neck again, and buckled my breeches far up from the 
knee, expecting deeper water; and,
crossing the Lynn, I went stoutly up under the branches which hang so dark 
on the Bagworthy river. I found it
strongly overwoven, turned and torn with the thicket wood, but not so rocky 
as the Lynn and more inclined to go
evenly.
Here, although affrighted often by the deep dark places,  and feeling that 
every step I took might never be taken
backward, on the whole I had very good sport with loaches, trout, and 
minnows, forking some, and tickling some, and driving others to shallow nooks whence I could bail them ashore. Thus I 
was led on,
forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of the time, but shouting in a childish way whenever 
I caught a "whacker." In answer to my shouts there was no sound except of a rocky echo, or a scared bird hustling 
away, or the
sudden dive of a water-vole; and the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grew darker above 
me, until I
thought the fishes might have a good chance of eating me, instead of my eating the fishes.
Now the day was falling fast behind the brown of the hill tops, and the trees, being void of leaf and 
hard, seemed
giants ready to beat me. Every moment, too, as the sky was clearing up for a white frost, the cold of 
the water got
worse and worse, until I was fit to cry with it. So, in a sorry plight, I came to an opening in the 
bushes where a great
black pool lay in front of me, whitened at the sides with foam-froth.
Now, though I could swim and feared no depth of water, yet I had no desire to go over head and ears 
into this great
pool, being so cramped and weary and cold enough in all conscience, though wet only up to the middle, 
not counting
arms and shoulders. The look of this black pit was enough to stop one from diving into it, even on a 
hot summer's day
with sunshine on the water, if the sun ever shone there. I shuddered and drew back, not alone at the 
pool itself and
the black air there was about it, but also at the whirling manner and wisping of white threads in 
stripy circles upon it,
with the centre still as jet.
Soon I saw the reason of the stir and depth of that great pit, as well as of the roaring sound, 
which long had made
me wonder. Skirting round one side,
where the rocks were high and steep and the ledge at the foot very narrow, I came to a sudden sight 
and marvel such
as I never dreamed of. For lo! I stood at the foot of a long pale slide of water, coming smoothly to 
me, without any
break or hindrance, for a hundred yards or more, and fenced on either side with cliff, sheer and 
straight and shining.
The water neither ran nor fell, nor leapt with any spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if it 
had been combed or
planed, and looking like a plank of deal laid down a deep black staircase. There was, however, no 
side rail nor any
place to walk upon, only the channel a  fathom wide, and the perpendicular walls of crag shutting 
out the evening.
The look of this place had a sad effect, searing me very greatly, and making me feel that I would 
give something only
to be at home again, with Annie cooking my supper, and our dog, Watch, sniffing upward. But nothing 
would come of
wishing, so I laid the case before me in a little council. I am free to own that it was not any fine sense of shame that settled my 
decision. What saved me from 
turning back
was a, strange inquisitive desire very unbecoming in a boy of little years; in a word,
I would risk a great deal to know what made the water come down like that, and what was at the top 
of it.
 Therefore, I girt up my breeches anew, with each
buckle one hole tighter, for the sodden straps were
stretching and giving. Then I  bestowed my  fish 
around  my neck more tightly, and, not stopping to
look much for fear of fear, I crawled along over the
fort of rocks where the water had scooped the
stone out, and let my feet into the  dip and rush
of the torrent.
Here I would have gone down into the great black pool and never been heard of more, but for my trusty loach-fork. The green 
wave came down like great bottles upon me, and my legs went in a 
moment, and I
had time only to think of my mother and Annie, and knock my head very sadly when, with a roar of 
water upon me,
my fork stuck fast in a rock and I was borne up upon it. I felt nothing except that it might be worth 
while, or again it
might not, to have another fight for it, but presently the dash of the water upon my face revived me, 
and my mind grew
used to the roar of it.
I gathered my legs back slowly and managed to win a foothold, leaning well forward like a draught 
horse, and
balancing on my strength, as it were, with the ashen stake set behind me. Then I said to myself, "John Ridd, the
sooner you get yourself out by the way you came, the better it will be for you." But, to my great 
dismay and fright, I
saw that no choice was left me now, except that I must climb somehow up that hill of water, or else 
be washed down
into the pool and whirled around till it drowned me. There was no way of getting back the way I had 
gone down into it,
and farther up was a hedge of rock on either side of the waterway rising a hundred yards in height 
and, for all I could
tell, five hundred, and no place to set foot in.
 Having said the Lord's Prayer, and made a very
bad job of it, I grasped the good loach-stick under
a knot, steadied myself with my left hand, and so
with a sigh of despair began my course up the
fearful torrent-way. It seemed half a mile at least
of sliding water above me, but in truth it was little
more than a furlong. It would have been a hard
ascent, even without the slippery slime, and the
force of the river over it, and I had scanty hope
indeed of ever winning the summit. Nevertheless,
my terror left me, now I was face to face with it
and had to meet the worst; and I set myself to do my best with a vigour and sort of hardness which 
did not then
surprise me, but have done so ever since.
The water was from six to nine inches deep, and all the way up I could see my feet looking white in 
the gloom of the
hollow, and here and there I found resting place to hold on by the cliff and pant awhile. Gradually, 
as I went on, a
warmth of courage breathed in me to think that perhaps no other had dared to try that pass before me, and to
wonder what Mother would say to it. How I went carefully, step by step, keeping my arms in front of 
me, and never
daring to straighten my knees, is more than I can tell clearly.
The greatest danger of all, however, was where I saw no jeopardy, and ran up a patch of black 
ooze-weed in a very
boastful manner, being now not far from the summit. Here I fell very piteously, and the torrent got 
hold of my other leg while I was indulging the bruised one. Then vile knotting cramp disabled me, and for a time I could 
only roar until
my mouth was full of water and all my body was sliding. The fright of that brought me to again, and 
my elbow caught
in a rock hole; and so I managed to start again with the help of more humility.
Now being in the most dreadful fright, because I
was so near to the top, and hope was beating within me, I laboured hard with both legs and arms, 
going like a mill,
and grunting. At last the rush of forked water, where first it came over the lips of the fall, drove 
me into the middle, and
I stuck awhile with my toes on the slippery links of the pop weed, and the world was green and 
gliddery, and I durst
not look behind me. Then I made up my mind to die at last; for so my legs would ache
no more, and my breath not pain my heart so; only it did seem such a pity after fighting so long to give in; and the
light was coming upon me, and again I fought towards it; and suddenly I felt fresh air and fell into it headlong.
[To be continued.]

I KNEW A FOX.
For a long time I called Rusty my " phantom"
fox. I saw his tracks in the thick yellow dust of
the country road, morning after morning, as I
tramped along it through the white oak woods,
which spread over the clay bluffs of the Iowa
River to my little rural school. He seemed to take
delight in seeing how many times he could cross
that particular road in one night. Foxes were
plentiful in  that vicinity, my pupils told me, but
I knew the tracks I was watching were all made
by one fox - there could be no two foxes in that
neighbourhood each lacking the same two toes from
the same foot, as this fellow was. It was the peculiarity of his track that first caught my attention, the clay dust, especially when a 
little damp, showing the
impression of his mutilated foot almost as sharply as would a plaster cast.
I saw so many of his tracks, always in that perfectly straight line that foxes make, and on so many days without
seeing him, that our hide-and-seek game became almost uncanny. I often found myself tense as I catfooted it along
the road, always hoping to surprise him just round the corner, and I had the definite feeling of being watched by the
sly rascal, as he lay somewhere behind the hazel brush grinning gleefully as I passed. I often tried to imagine how it
would be to have the eyes and nose and ears of a fox and be able to live entirely by one's wits as this fellow lived. 
But even a phantom fox can become careless, and this one did.
On this particular morning I was taking a short  cut through the trees, when there, not more than a hundred feet
ahead, I saw a marvellous fox, gambolling like a kitten in the leaves. I could scarcely believe what my eyes told
me. Where were those wonderful eyes of his, that keen nose, those ears attuned to the faintest squeak of a mouse?
Pshaw! Foxes couldn't be nearly as smart as I'd supposed, and for a moment I had a keen feeling of disappointment.
If this was really my phantom fox, he had surely let me  down.
Then reason hastened to excuse him. For one thing, it had rained the night before  and my feet trod soundlessly
among the leaves. Also, a light wind was blowing across him to me, and the early morning sun was at my back and
shining straight into his eyes. Respect for him returned as I thought of these things. Old Mother Nature had simply
stacked the cards of circumstance in my favour, and I'd be a fool not to take advantage of them. Stepping, therefore, behind a 
tree, I got out my field glasses, peeped out cautiously and looked him over.
It is rarely that anyone sees a wild animal at its best. As a hunter I have shot many wild things, 
but in spite of my
elation over their capture, the dead creatures I picked up were not really those at which I had 
aimed. Foxes in zoos,
also, in common with many other animals, are but furtive slinking creatures, and those caught in 
traps are snarling
vicious brutes transmuted by pain and fear into mere caricatures of real foxes.
But this one now before me, how like a king he was! Free, unfearing, the very spirit of the wild!
I believe I have never seen a more beautiful or more graceful creature. His long hair, red and gold, 
gleamed in the sun;
his slim legs, booted with black for half their length, bent and flipped like steel springs; his 
muscles rippled under his
sleek hide; his alert face fairly shone with intelligence.
 What was he doing ? I have said he was bouncing about like a kitten, but  there was obvious purpose 
in his actions.
With a quick flip of a slender paw he would turn a pile of leaves, and then his jaws would snap 
quickly right and left at
something that came out from beneath. It was something agile, probably crickets, which are plentiful 
in leaves, and
foxes never refuse insects when there is nothing better. So intent was he upon his breakfast that he 
did not notice
that I, treading carefully and keeping tree trunks between us, had come within a dozen yards of him. It was
inexplicable, but there was that shining, frisking red fellow as proof.
During one of his gyrations I gave a short sharp whistle.  The red rascal froze instantly, one 
front paw lifted, his
black-tipped ears thrust forward, his muzzle half-hidden in the leaves. He held this position for 
a moment; then
slowly his head came up as he looked slowly round, sniffing and sampling the air on all sides. Detecting nothing, he 
turned back to cricket
hunting. After a moment I again whistled.
This time he thought the matter needed investigation. Slowly he backed against a tree, sat dog-like 
on his haunches,
and looked about for a full minute, his eyes seemingly taking in every detail. I  took care that only 
my nose and
glasses were showing alongside a tree trunk, and, as I said before, both the breeze and sun were in 
my favour. After
a time he apparently decided that he had been mistaken, and returned, though only half-heartedly, to 
his hunting.
Then, remembering that I must go on my way to school, I reluctantly stepped out into full view.
At sight of me he half-squatted and stared at this tree suddenly transformed into a man. Then away he 
flashed, his
white-tipped tail streaming out behind, across a narrow creek in a leap and down a gully out of sight.
I walked over to where his flying feet had landed on the sandy edge of the stream and there, sure 
enough, was the
mark of a two-toed foot. At last I had really met my phantom fox - Rusty, or Two Toes, as I 
afterwards learned to call
him.
It was under different circumstances that I
next met Rusty. One morning, following a  light
snow,   one of my older scholars told me that a big fox had raided their hen house and had 
killed and carried
away three fowls. "That old chicken-killer
wants to look out," said the boy; "but perhaps being in a  trap before has made him wise to 
them, for according
to his tracks he has already lost two toes from some mischief or other."
He could, of course, be talking only of Rusty, and I secretly invoked the fates that preside over foxes to keep him from the boy's 
traps, but to no avail. Two mornings later the boy cheerfully 
announced that he had
caught the villain. " I believe," he said, "it's a fox we had for a time a year ago. We dug a den of 
them out, and I kept
one till he was half-grown. Then he dug under the pen and got away. Perhaps his being used to the man 
smell was why he was caught so easily. Will you come and see him on your way home to-night?"
It was Rusty, sure enough, looking pretty crestfallen in a big wire cage, but not badly hurt. After 
that I visited Rusty
daily on my way to and from school. At first he paid little attention to me, either continuing his 
constant pacing back
and forth in his cage, or merely laying back his ears and snarling if I went too close. It was clear, 
however that the
boy had recaptured his pet, for in a few days he had a collar round the fox's neck and was leading him 
at the end of a
chain.
I believe I finally won my way to Rusty's toleration, if not his regard, by way of his stomach. 
Rusty, like all foxes, had
a great weakness for mice, and, after I had brought him a dozen or so live ones, he apparently began 
to associate
me with this delicacy. At my approach he would come quickly to the side of the cage, showing me by 
all sorts of
twistings and grins and fox language generally, that I was carrying what he wanted in the worst way. 
He was amazingly quick at catching a mouse, usually picking it up hastily but gingerly with the tip of his 
long snout, flipping
it high into the air, and then catching it between wide jaws as it fell. He would eat grasshoppers, 
crickets,
earthworms, snakes, frogs, sparrows, fish - in fact, almost every kind of small animal, and even 
berries and apples
occasionally. But mice were much his favourite food.
After several weeks of mouse-feeding, Rusty finally allowed me to scratch him on the head but he 
always laid his
ears down, and I had the unpleasant feeling that at any moment he was
as likely to sink a dozen or so of his forty-two sharp teeth into my flesh. He allowed the boy, however, to pet 
him freely, this
being probably owing to a hold-over in his nervous system from their earlier relationship - something 
in which I played
no part.
In making the cage, the boy had anticipated the fox's digging, and had not only placed the woven wire 
two feet
underground, but had turned it inwards horizontally three feet all round. Rusty had tried in various 
places, only to
come upon wire, but finally he sank an almost vertical tunnel in the middle of the cage and dug out 
sideways under
the wire in one night's time. That was in April, and, when I left the vicinity on the 1st June, no 
sign of Rusty had been
seen and I supposed it was the end.
Nearly two years after Rusty's prison break, I was duck-hunting one morning some ten miles from his 
former home,
when I saw a fox's track, and it was Rusty's. There could be no mistaking that peculiar scalloped 
track. I found myself
thrilled as I momentarily expected to meet him. And I did. As I rounded a thick copse he was standing 
there full 
face to me, sniffing at a rabbit he had just killed, looking as glorious, as he did that first 
morning I had seen him
nearly three years before. I think he knew me, too, but in spite of my calls, he picked up his prize, 
turned deliberately,
and was soon out of sight.
I turned to my half-forgotten duck-hunting, and towards noon met an old school-mate who was also 
hunting. When
we sat down to lunch, I noticed his game pockets were bulging.
" Any luck? " I asked.
"Yes," he said.; " a few mallards and something I've not seen before 
around here." He reached into his pocket and
dragged out the still fresh skin of a red fox.
"That fellow came up to within fifty yards of me," he said, "just as if he 
wasn't afraid. Must have weighed fifteen
pounds.. I skinned him so as not to carry all the weight. Isn't he a dandy?"
And the only thing I could do was to nod as both eyes and fingers sought 
and found the scar of those missing two
toes.
-Abridged and adapted from "I knew a Fox," by ROY L. ABBOTT, in "Natural 
History."

CHANGED AMBITION.
" I THINK I'LL BE AN ENGINE-DRIVER, AFTER ALL!"

A HARD CLIMB AND THE SEQUEL.
(Continued from page 154.)
When I came to myself again, my hands were
full of young grass and mould, and a little girl kneeling at my side was rubbing my forehead tenderly with a dock-leaf and 
a handkerchief.
"Oh, I am so glad," she whispered softly as I opened my eyes and looked at her; "now you will try to be better, won't you ?"
I had never heard so sweet a sound as came from between her bright red lips, while there she knelt and gazed at me ; neither 
had I seen anything so beautiful as
the large dark eyes intent upon me, full of pity and wonder. Perhaps she liked my countenance, and indeed I know she did, 
because she said so afterwards. Not
that I had any beauty or ever pretended to have any, only a solid healthy face which many girls have laughed at.
Thereupon I sat upright with my little trident still in one hand, and was much afraid to speak to her, being conscious of my 
country brogue. But she clapped her
hands and made a trifling dance around my back, and came to me on the other side as if I were a great plaything.
" What is your name? " she asked ; " and how did you come here, and what are these wet things in this great bag? "
" You had better let them alone,," I said; "they
are loaches for my mother  But I will get you some if you like."
"Dear me, how much you must think of them! Why, they are only fish. But how your feet are bleeding!  Oh, I must tie them up 
for you. And no shoes nor
stockings! Is your mother very poor,
poor boy? "
" No," I said, being vexed at this ; " we are rich enough to buy all this great meadow if we choose
and here are my shoes and stockings."
" Why, they are quite as wet as your feet ; and I cannot bear to see your feet. Oh, please let me 
manage them ; I will do it very
softly."
" Oh, I don't think much of that," I replied. "I shall put some goose grease to them. But how you are looking at me! I never saw 
anyone like you 
before. My name is John
Ridd. What is your name?"
" Lorna Doone," she answered in a low voice, as if afraid of it, and hanging her head, so that I 
could see only her forehead and
eyelashes " if you please, my name is Lorna Doone ; and I thought you must have known it."
Then I stood up and touched her hand and tried to make her look at me : but she only turned away the 
more. Young and harmless
as she was, her name alone made guilt of her. Nevertheless, I could not help looking at her tenderly, 
and the more when her
blushes turned into tears, and her tears to long, low sobs.
"Don't cry," I said, "whatever you do. I am sure you have never done any harm. I will give you all 
my fish, Lorna, and catch some
more for Mother ; only don't be angry with me."
She flung her little soft arms up in the passion of her tears, and looked at me so piteously, that 
what did I do but kiss her. It seemed
to be a very odd thing, when I came to think of it, because I hated kissing so, as all honest boys 
must do. But she touched my
heart with a sudden delight, like a cowslip blossom and the sweetest flowers of spring
She gave me no encouragement ; nay, she even wiped her lips (which methought was rather rude of her), 
and drew away, and
smoothed her dress
as if I had used a freedom. Then I felt my cheeks grow burning red, and I gazed at my legs and was 
sorry. Although she was such
a little girl, eight years old or thereabouts, she turned to the stream in a bashful manner, and 
began to watch the water and to rub
one leg against the other. I, for my part, being vexed at her behaviour to me, took up all my things 
to go, and made a fuss about it,
to let her know I was going. But she did not call me back at all, as I had made sure she would do. I 
knew, moreover, that to try the
descent was almost certain death to me, and it looked as dark as pitch ; so at the mouth I turned 
round again, and came back to
her and said, " Lorna."
" Oh, I thought you were gone," she answered. "Why did you ever come here? Do you know what they would do to us if they 
found you here with me?"
" Beat us, I dare say, very hard, or me at least. They could never beat you."
"No. They would kill us both outright, and bury us here by the water."
"But what should they kill me for?"
"Because you have found the way up here. Now, please to go , oh, please to . They will kill us both in a moment. Yes, I like you 
very much "-for I was teasing her to say it-" very much indeed, and 
I will call you John Ridd, if you
like ; only please to go, John. And when your feet are well, you know, you can come and tell me how 
they are."
" But I tell you, Lorna, I like you very much indeed, nearly as much as Annie, and a great deal more 
than Lizzie. And I never saw
anyone like you ; and I must come back to-morrow and so must you to
see me : and I will bring you such a lot of things - there are apples still, and a thrush I caught with only one leg broken, and our 
dog has just had puppies "
" Oh, dear, they won't let me have a dog. There is not a dog in the valley. They say they are such 
noisy things. Hush! "
A shout came down the valley, and all my heart was trembling like water after sunset, and Lorna's 
face was altered from pleasant play to terror. She shrank to me and
looked up at me with such a power of weakness, that I at once made up my mind to save her or die with 
her. A tingle went through all my bones, and I only longed for
my carbine. The little girl took courage from me and put her cheek quite close to mine.
"Come with me down the waterfall. I can carry you easily ; and Mother will take care of you."
"No, no," she cried as I took her up. " I will tell you what to do. They are only looking for me. You 
see the hole, that hole there? " She pointed to a little niche in the
rock, which verged the meadow, about fifty yards away from us. In the fading of the twilight, I could 
just descry it.
"Yes,  I see it ; but they will see me crossing the grass to get there. "
" Look! Look! " She could hardly speak. "There is a way out from the top of it. They would kill me if I told it. Oh, here they 
come; I can see them."
The little maid turned as white as the snow that hung on the rocks above her, and she looked at the 
water and then at me, and she cried, " Oh dear! Oh dear." And she
began to sob aloud being so young and so unready. I drew her behind the withy bushes and close to the 
water. Here they could not see us from the upper valley. Luckily
I had picked up my fish and taken my three-pronged fork away. Crouching in that hollow nest, I saw a dozen fierce 
men come down on the other side of the water, not bearing any
firearms, but looking lax and jovial, as if they were come from riding and a dinner taken hungrily. "Queen! Queen! " they were 
shouting. "Where the pest is our little queen gone? "
" They always call me queen, and I am to be queen by and by," Lorna whispered to me. " Oh, they are 
crossing by the timber there, and then they are sure to see us."
" Stop," said I. " Now I see what to do. I must get into the water, and you must go to sleep."
" To be sure, yes, away in the meadow there. But how bitter cold it will be for you! "
She saw in a moment the way to do it ; sooner than I could tell her ; and there was no time to lose.
" Now, mind you never come again," she whispered over her shoulder as she crept away with a childish 
twist; "only I shall come sometimes - oh, here they are!"
Daring scarce to peep, I crept into the water and lay down bodily in it, with my head between two 
blocks of stone and some driftwood over me. Still, there seemed to be
no chance at all but that the men must find me. All this time they were shouting and swearing and 
keeping such a hallabaloo that the rocks all round the valley rang ;
and my heart quaked (what with this and the cold) so that the water began to gurgle round me and lap 
upon the pebbles. The little maid was lying beneath a rock, thirty
or forty yards from me, feigning to be asleep, with her dress spread beautifully and her hair drawn 
over her.
Presently one of the great rough men came round a corner upon her. "Here our queen is! Here's the queen! Here's the captain's 
daughter!" he shouted to his comrades, " fast asleep and hearty!"
He set her dainty little
form upon his great
 square shoulder, and her narrow feet in one broad hand ; and so in triumph
with the purple velvet of her skirt ruffling in his long, black beard, and the silken length of her hair 
fetched out, like a cloud by the wind, behind her. Going up that darkened glen, little Lorna turned 
and put up a hand to me, and
I put up a hand to her in the thick of the mist and the willows.
She was gone ; and I crept into a bush for warmth and rubbed my shivering legs on bark, and longed 
for Mother's faggot. Then
as daylight sank behind the forget-me-not of stars, with a sorrow to be quit, I knew that now must be 
my time to get away, if
there were any.
I managed to crawl from the bank to the niche in the cliff that Lorna had shown me, and before very 
long the moon appeared.
Then I espied rough steps and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow, steep, and far asunder, 
scooped here and
there in the side of the entrance, and then round a bulge of the cliff like the marks upon a great 
brown loaf where a hungry child
has picked it. High up, there seemed to be a rude broken trail, like the shadow of a crooked stick 
upon a house wall.
I set my foot in the lowest stirrup (as I might almost call it) and clung to the rock with my nails, and worked to make a jump into 
the second stirrup. I compassed that, too, with the aid of my stick ; 
but the third step-hole was
the hardest of all, and the rock swelled out on me over my chest, and there seemed to be no 
attempting it, until I espied a
good stout rope hanging in a groove of shadow, and just
managed to reach the end of it.
How I climbed up and across the clearing, and found my way home through the Bagworthy forest is more 
than I can remember
now, for I took all the rest of it then as a dream, by reason of perfect weariness.
-Adapted from "Lorna Doone," by R. D. BLACKMORE.

DRAGON'S BREATH FOR SALE.
[Young Fu was a fourteen-year-old Chinese boy, apprenticed to a coppersmith in Chungking on the
Yangtze-Kiang. His widowed mother,  Fu Be Be,
with whom he lived in one small room, was very, very poor.]
One evening Young Fu was passing through one of the larger business thoroughfares when, hanging in a jeweller's shop, he saw 
a shining nickel watch,
large and round and, strange to say, black of face. Young Fu had seen several watches in his 
life-time, but never one with a dark face. He stopped and studied it. Then
he crossed the sill and asked the proprietor the reason for such a colour.
Hsui, the jeweller, was stout and prosperous,
with all the tricks of the trade at his command. "I do not recognize you," he began, "but you are a 
young man of very great acumen. That valuable treasure has been
hanging there on display for three days, and you are the first with sufficient intellect to note its 
extraordinary appearance."
These words at once knocked down all the defences which the youth might normally have had in the presence of the shopkeeper. 
He was used to remarks of another colour. Open-mouthed he stared into Hsui's face, charmed by this agreement with his own 
feelings about himself. In a daze he watched Hsui 
take down the watch and then beckon him to a dark
corner of the shop. Right, there Young Fu was given one of the greatest shocks of
his life. Held in the darkness the watch glowed into a live thing, and the figures upon its face turned before his eyes into 
so many tiny snakes of fire. He felt cold all over, but he
concealed his trembling and only mumbled in a shaky voice,
"Extremely queer!"
 Hsui, fully aware of his victim's state of mind, pursued 
 his game. " And only you of all the people
 in Chungking knew what to expect of this gift for
an emperor. Let me press this gift upon you.  A sacrifice for me, yes, a great one, but then to meet with one of your intelligence is 
a rare privilege, and I am willing to pay for 
the experience."
"Do you  mean to give me this precious gift? asked Young Fu.
" Just that," said Hsui, " just that! You may take the watch with you now. I ask only one small favour: that you sign this 
bit of paper, which my neighbour, Liu, will witness, and
sometime, when fortune is yours, send me the paltry sum of five dollars as an acknowledgment of the gift."
The neighbour appeared as if by magic and, before the boy could catch his breath, he found himself on his homeward way with 
the watch in his hand.
His pleasure in the newly-acquired treasure soon faded. To begin with, Fu Be Be was horrified at the debt of five dollars. 
"We shall have to beg on the streets, or starve!" she wailed.
"I shall have no coffin for a decent burial! " At this thought tears took the place of words, for the ruling desire of her 
life was to save enough to purchase her coffin. She had dreamed
of its presence in that wretched room: a sweet-smelling wooden box to be used as table and chest until the day when she herself 
would occupy it in state. Now all her hopes lay about her. Her son earned nothing, and she very little. A debt of five dollars was 
something not to be faced, and there it 
was all because this stupid boy had shown no more sense
than to buy this foreign devil's machine. " What do we need of a watch? " she demanded shrilly. " When I wish to know the 
hour, I can look in the eyes of my neighbour's cat and
find out."
Defenceless against this blame, Young Fu suddenly blew out the candle and showed her the watch in the dark. Fu Be Be 
shrieked. "It is some foreign devil's spirit come to live with us and disgrace my old age! What have I done that I 
should have a son so brainless? "
In the period that followed, Young Fu returned each evening to face these same questions and others 
like them. He went forth each morning to be accosted by Hsui or his clerk
concerning the matter of the five dollars and the "bit of paper." Under the combined torments he grew 
thin. Flown was his sense of wisdom and self-importance; he knew now that
never in the history of the house of Fu had there been such a dolt as himself.
And then, as if he were not already miserable enough, the watch lost its power to charm. Originally 
it had cost somewhere in America the sum of ninety-eight cents; it had come
a long way from home and was tired. One morning in the second month of possession its mainspring 
gasped in a final effort, and all its contents settled into peaceful relaxation. A
few days later, unable to adapt themselves to Chungking's uncertain climate, the small fiery snakes 
became paler and paler until darkness and light became one and the same
thing.
"No good! It was worn out when I got it," growled Young Fu to himself. But for the first time in 
weeks Fu Be Be smiled. Within her was the assurance that the incense and rice
which she had placed before Kwan Yin's shrine had achieved the foreign spirit's death; and her 
scoldings lost some of their sting.
With her assistance two dollars had been paid to Hsui, but now the New Year was upon them, and the 
balance was still owing. Fu Be Be refused to let Young Fu have anything
from her small store of savings for this festival ; better to owe a debt to man than to cheat the 
gods of their offerings.
" But Hsui," stammered her son, " Hsui must be paid. One day only remains before the New Year dawns, 
when debts as well as clothing and food must be new. He will not stop
until he finds me, and then -"
Frantic with worry, Fu Be Be interrupted relentlessly, " That is your affair. You bought the watch; 
now it is for you to manage your creditor."
Miserably Young Fu went about the following day's tasks. In the afternoon, having found no possible 
solution to his problem, he made up his mind to escape from Chungking and
old Hsui until the New Year had passed. He decided to visit a cousin who, his mother had told him, 
lived in the hills across the Yangtze.
 At the river's edge he asked a boatman for the
 privilege of helping to load vegetables, and thus
 earned a free ride across to the other bank. There
 he nodded his thanks, and walked slowly up the
path to the first village on the hill. His blue
 cotton jacket and trousers flapped in the sharp
 wind, and misty fragments of the leaden sky
 stretched out damp cold fingers and clung to him.
 He shivered - cold here in the hills, and in the little
 money-bag tied within his belt, just eight coppers!
 Here he was on the eve of the most important
 holiday of the year, a fugitive from home and
 Chungking; and all because he had been unable to
resist Hsui's flattery. Miserably he shrugged the
 thought away and, entering the village, slipped into
 the tea-house and ordered a bowl of steaming tea.
The road winding past was busy with traffic. Ornate sedan chairs, hung with heavy satin and gay 
tassels, pushed by on the shoulders of chair-bearers in livery. Here and there a
small open reed basket held a traveller, who had made the arduous trip over the mountains, and threading in and out were hired 
street chairs, cracked and scarred, looking as if they might drop their occupants along the 
roadside any minute.
 Young Fu watched the unceasing stream make
its bustling way   down to the river-bank, there to
be ferried across the Yangtze to Chungking. Exiles
they were, living in other sections for various
reasons, and now returning with their families for
the New Year's festivities, to Chungking, where they
had been born. No man in all China but would
make the journey home at this season, regardless of
weather or anything else. The one essential was
money and a clear record. And that, Young Fu
reminded himself dismally, was just what he did
not at the moment possess. Otherwise he would
now be with his mother in their tenement room.
Poor as he knew it to be, longing added to distance made that room seem more desirable than the halls 
in the Governor's residence. There would be charcoal in the brazier to
warm his cold hands and feet, and as for food, Fu Be Be starved cheerfully enough for the rest of 
the year, but there was no stinting about what she considered suitable for offering
the gods. And when the gods had partaken of all they wished, that which remained was shared by the 
household. Young Fu's mouth watered as he thought of delectable dishes
rich in Szechuen spices and swimming in incomparable sauces.
In the weeks past, also, his mother had made for each of them a new outfit of clothing and a pair 
of black sateen shoes sewn with thousands of delicate stitches. The shoe soles,
made of scraps of paper and
cardboard found on the street and pasted together, she had covered with stout cloth, and then
with her needle had traced a design of symmetry and beauty.
One night, coming down late from Wang Scholar's room, which was above theirs, Young Fu had been 
touched by the bent weary figure devoting itself with such painstaking effort
to the pattern of the sole. "Why do you spend your heart?" he asked. " One wearing on these slimy 
pavements will ruin them. Look at my sandals bought five days since!
Already much of the straw is cut through."
That there was truth in what he said, Fu Be Be knew. Never had she imagined streets so filthy as 
those in Chungking. The footways and flights of steps were wet and slippery
with the drippings of the city's water supply, for Chungking utilized her rivers in more ways than 
one. Daily unnumbered coolies passed through the water-gates, filled the buckets
suspended from their carrying poles, and retraced their steps slowly and painfully back to the city 
heights. That was done many times daily, so that the hundreds of thousands
within the city walls might drink and be cleansed.
" Why waste material and strength if not to make good shoes? " Fu Be Be countered, squinting eyes 
that were half-blind from loss of sleep.
Thinking over lost delights of food and clothing would not gain him a night's food or shelter now, 
Young Fu said to himself. He paid for the tea and inquired about the location of
his cousin's farm. The name was recognized and the directions given. As he climbed the winding paths 
between the terraced fields, the cold became more intense, and it was a
relief to find himself at last descending into the little valley where the farm lay. The house, 
solidly black against the night's shadows, was folded in quietness. Young Fu rapped
sharply, and someone called out, "Who is there? "
(To be continued.)

THE SHIPWRECK.
[The scene of our story is the largest of the Blasket Islands, off the Kerry coast of Ireland, and the time is during the Great War of 
1914-18. The island is only five miles long and half-a-mile wide, and its population about one hundred and fifty. The author 
wrote this story of his boyhood in the native Irish language.]
On Tuesday in the month of May, with a heavy heart, I washed and cleaned 
myself for school. Then I wandered out
and sat down at the end of the lane to wait for my comrade, Tom Vaun. 
Before long I saw the master coming down
the glen. I was smitten with the weariness of the world. How envious I 
felt of the old men who were driving their cattle
into the hill, even of the bird that would float above my head with 
nothing to trouble it, but its singing to itself when it
wished, and flying off when it wished, and going asleep when it wished. 
When shall I be a man ? When shall I be free
from the oppressions of the master I see coming down the glen?
Tom came up. "We'll be late," said he. He was smiling.
" Do you feel at all lazy before school, Tom? "
" Ah, musha*," said he with a frown, " if anyone is as bad as I, I don't know what to say."
" As bad as you! Oh, Tom, if you are as bad as I am, I am content, for I thought there was no one in the world so
wretched as myself."
We went inside and sat down on a bench. The master took up a book. "Now," said he, "we will do some dictation."
" Oh dear! " said Tom, giving me a prod in the side.
"Long, long ago," dictated the master, " there was a man living in the village of Ballyboy."
But he had only read so far when we heard a clamour outside. I looked out of the window and saw five or six men
hurrying down the Causeway with thole-pins and ropes. "Tom," I said, "more wreckage!"
The master went out to the door. He stayed there a while and then walked up to the mistress. "Something wonderful
is after happening," said he; "go out and see what it is."
"The dictation is over," I whispered to Tom.
The mistress came back looking pale. " A big ship has gone down in the Sorrowful Cliff," she said.
The master opened his eyes in astonishment. "Look after the school till I come back," said he.
" Look now," said Tom, " we'll have the day under the hedge."
We were all in the hurry of our lives for twelve o'clock, making the noise of the world without any thought of the
dictation, for we had no fear of the mistress. She herself was in and out the door all the time, till twelve o'clock came.
Away we ran joyfully as fast as our heels would carry us.

* Indeed.

My word, it was a marvellous sight -  tins, barrels of flour, big black boxes, big white boxes, big boxes of bacon, not a
living being to be seen, nor a curragh* on the stays.
"Tom, come west to the Spit of Seals' Cove. It's there the whole village is gathered! "

ON GREAT BLASKET ISLAND.

Away we ran, leaping for delight. As we approached the Great Glen, we met Maura
Andrew with three cardboard boxes. " Oh, my heart, a big ship is gone down on the Lochar Rock, and the sea is full
of all sorts of riches!" said she.
We darted like birds along the lane to the west till we went down on to Shingle Strand. Everything was in confusion - boxes and 
chests of every shape and colour, not an inch of the sand but was covered in wreckage.

*A canoe of wicker, covered with canvas and tarred.

" Oh," cried Tom, " we are rich for ever! "
As soon as I set foot on the shingle I saw Mickil Shamus on my left with his head in a barrel, Dermod 
O'Shea
beside him, and his mouth stained with drink. Mickil Shamus drew out his head. There was the same 
stain on his
mouth.
"Now is the time for you to blow out your waists," said Dermod.
" What is it? "
" Cod liver oil!" I put my head over the barrel.
"Ah, don't be sniffing it, but swallow it down. It will put marrow into your bones, a thing they lack 
now."
I took a mouthful, but if I had got a thousand pounds I couldn't have taken more. I spat it out.
At that moment I heard a shout from Tom. " Oh, Maurice, look east at the King with all the 
chocolates! " The King of
the Island had opened a big chest, which had a number of small boxes inside it, and he was laying 
them out on the
shingle. " Now, my lads," he called out, " if you have good teeth! " He gave us each a box. Thanking 
him, we ran east
among the rocks and sat down without a word of talk, till at last we were sick of the taste of them, 
for they were very
strong.
" Isn't it well we came, Tom? "
"It is true for you," answered Tom.
On our way west again we noticed two men doing something secretly. We followed them. They had a pretty
decorated box, not another like it on the Strand. It was full of watches. " Oh," said Tom, "look at 
the watches! " They
overheard us and shut the box quickly. "Be off with you! " said Pat Lane, running after us to drive 
us away.
" Hucs," cried Tom, " we know what you have"; and we ran away along the Strand.
We climbed the path to the top of Sorrowful Cliff, and it was an astonishing sight. Nothing but 
wreckage! Without a lie
you could have walked out from the Spit of Seals' Cove and gone ashore in Inish Tuiscirt without 
wetting your foot,
with all the cotton-bales, chests, boxes, and appurtenances on the sea.
" How did any ship carry all that? " said Tom.
" It passes understanding," said I.
Soon we were in sight of Lochar Rock where the ship struck. The two masts and the funnel were still above water.
The old women of the village were sitting on their haunches on the cliff's edge looking out, a 
curragh coming to the
quay with a load and another leaving, the cove ringing with the sound of blows on the boxes out to 
sea. Every curragh
had an axe, and, when they found a box too big to bring ashore, they split it open on the spot; and 
when a seal would
put up his head to take the air he would only have his snout out of water when he would hear the 
blows, and down he
would dive again in alarm.
From that out, there was plenty and abundance in the Island - food of all sorts, clothes from head to 
heel, every man,
woman, and child with a watch in his pocket, everything a mouth could wish for, coming in with the 
tide from day to
day - all except the sugar, which melted as soon as it touched water.
A week later there came a heavy storm from the north-west. Everyone was waiting in expectancy, for 
there was no
telling what might come out of the ship if the storm broke it up. The people took little sleep, but 
spent their time
keeping a watch on the strands and coves, and going into the hill to look down at the ship.
It was a Monday. Tom and I were talking at the bottom of the lane, with no thought of school but of the wreckage.
" What would you say to going to Shingle Strand," said I, "to see if there is anything thrown in? "
" Come on," said he eagerly.
The gale was shrieking across the Pass of Hillslope from the west. When we reached the Sandhills we 
had to cling
fast to each other to keep our feet. We went down towards the Strand. The din was terrible. An 
enormous wave would
break in and sweep the shingle up to the foot of the cliffs. Then it would churn up the stones as it 
receded. We had to
put our fingers over our ears to shut out the noise.
"Don't let us go down, Tom; we'd be drowned surely! "
"Do you know where we'll go? " said Tom. "Out on to the Spit of Seals' Cove to see the wreck in the Sorrowful Cliff."
We made our way in the teeth of the howling wind, each with a drowning man's grip upon the other. 
From time to time a gust would throw us to the ground. " I think," said Tom, "we had better not trust ourselves out 
on the Spit."
The words were not out of his mouth when we were both covered in a spurt of foam, which soaked us 
from head to
heel and sent us sprawling on the grass. We lay there for several minutes before either of us could 
speak.
" Where are you, Tom? " I cried.
" I am here," he shouted.
I rubbed my eyes. As I got up it seemed as if there were a ton weight in my body with the water. "Get 
up, Tom," I.
cried, " before we get the same again. It is lucky we did not go any farther, for we surely would 
have been thrown
from the cliff."
We walked up to Doulevy Spit. The sun was strong in the sky, so we stripped off every shred we had on, 
wrung the
water out of our clothes, and spread them out in the sunshine. Our teeth were chattering with the 
cold. It was five
o'clock when we turned our faces back to the village. We were aching with the hunger. From every 
house came the
smell of flesh roasting. When I reached home I looked on the floor. It was covered with leather, long 
strips of it and
big cow-hides.
" Wherever did you get it? " said I to my father, who was eating at the table.
" Aren't all the strands in the north full of it?" said he.
Every man and woman was now keeping watch for the low neap-tide, leaving home at the chirp of the 
sparrow,
searching every cave, cove, cliff, and crevice, and coming home in the evening with big bundles of 
leather, rain-coats,
shirts, strips of cloth, and caps in plenty. Whenever you looked out to the Pass of Hillslope or to 
the top of the road,
or to the road west, you would be sure to see someone returning home with a bundle on his back.
A week and a month passed with no school nor any thought of it, and, as the proverb says, that which 
is long absent
grows cold. The ship's cargo was at an end now, and nothing to be had on the sea, but everyone was 
making for the
strands and coves to gather in the cloth and leather. Tom and I were too young and weak to go to 
the strands in the
north, but even so we were not behind with the plunder, though we were only searching Blind Cove, Boat Cove, and Shingle 
Strand.
-Adapted from "Twenty Years A-Growing" by
MAURICE O'SULLIVAN. (Published in the Penguin Books.)

DRAGON'S BREATH FOR SALE.
(Continued from page 187.)
"It is Fu Yuin-fah, the son of your father's younger sister, and I have 
come from Chungking."
" What proof have I that you are that one?"
Young Fu recalled scraps of family history gleaned from Fu Be Be's 
conversations, and repeated them. After a
drawing of bolts the door was opened a crack, and a small paper lantern 
flickered over the outsider. Satisfied about
the harmlessness of this slender boy, the farmer invited him in, asking as he secured the door, "Why are you here
at this hour?
Young Fu explained over the tea and sweetened eggs, hastily prepared for 
him by his cousin's wife. The family stood
about him, shivering sleepily, while he confessed that he owed a debt and 
was hiding over night from his creditor.
There was much shaking of heads over this affair, and in a corner the 
grandmother, wrapped snugly in her comfort,
mumbled her sympathy with his poor mother. Young Fu began to think that 
even the cold winds and the hills might
be preferable to this chiding, but it soon ceased. He was given a comfortable place to sleep, and the house once more settled into 
silence.
It was still dark next morning when the others began to move about. The visitor stretched, and he was 
then startled
from his drowsiness by a hubbub at the door. " Come quickly," called the farmer.
Young Fu unrolled his comfort and joined the
others. Outside there was a 
 strange whiteness in the air, and small pieces of soft down fluttered about their heads and settled on their garments.
"Feathers! " exclaimed Young Fu.
"No, snow," contradicted his host.
Young Fu and the children of the household looked about them in amazement. "So this is truly snow, 
is it?" he asked
the farmer again. " I have never seen it before."
"I have seen it only twice," said the farmer, " once when I was a boy, and again this morning. It is 
very strange."
They entered the house again. Young Fu had caught up a handful of powdery flakes from the ground, 
and now he
showed them to the wife and grandmother. The old woman was resting her tiny bound feet on a hot 
brazier and was
puffing at a water pipe. She put a finger to the snow in his hand.
"In my youth," she said, " they would have called this a good omen for the New Year; it is the Wintry 
Breath of the
Dragon."
" Oh! " exclaimed Young Fu. "It is gone." He looked in dismay at his wet hand.
The old grandmother chuckled. "With the coming of spring heat, winter dies; so with this. Your hand 
was warm."
Young Fu walked to the door and, stepping outside again, looked at the country about him, mistily 
outlined in the
dawn. Hills, fields, trees, even the twisting paths lay bewitched under the spell of this white 
magic. Beautiful like white
jade, he thought, soft like silk in a cocoon. "Dragon's Breath." He gazed about him with renewed interest.
"Dragon's Breath!" he repeated.
Re-entering the house, he asked the farmer,
"Could you lend me two large baskets! I want to fill them with snow to take to Chungking."
"Why trouble to carry snow all the way to Chungking?"
" Grandmother calls; it Dragon's Breath, and says it brings good fortune. I shall sell it to pay my 
debt."
After a heaping bowl of food and another of hot water, the baskets were forthcoming. Young Fu thanked 
his relatives
gratefully and, wishing them the finest prosperity the New Year might bring, he started out over the 
hills. He halted
when he noticed the snow was becoming less, and here he filled his baskets, packing the cold white 
substance into
a compact mass. When he reached the river, a boatman looked up from his load of oranges. "Ten 
coppers for a ride
to-day," he called out.
"I can give you something better than coppers," gasped the youth as he swung himself aboard. 
He reached
within his basket and shaped a lump of its contents into a ball. This he held before the man's 
astonished eyes.
"What is it? " came the question.
"Dragon's Breath from the hills," replied Young Fu. " It means fortune for the New Year."
" So! " remarked the boatman much impressed, and he laid it on the floor close to where he stood. In a short time they reached 
the Chungking side of the river. Young Fu lifted his carrying pole and 
climbed the steep
steps to the city gate. Once within, he swung ahead to a busy thoroughfare, and settled himself in a 
corner of a stone
wall for business. He began to call his strange merchandise for sale.
Nine o'clock had come and Chungking had risen early in honour of the New Year. In the homes there 
had been the
ceremony of the kitchen god's return, followed by an elaborate breakfast. Now, robed in new finery, 
the people were
about to start the day's round of excitement. Gaiety was in the air. Bunting, multicoloured, floated 
in the narrow
streets; from dingy house-fronts fluttered handsome banners bright with gold characters expressing 
the season's best
wishes. Lace-paper ornaments and pictures of the Goddess of Mercy, the God of Protection, and other important members of the 
heavenly 
circle shared
places of honour. Fantastic lanterns and toys of every description were being offered for sale. New 
Year was here,
and all China was preparing to enjoy it.
Crowds chattering noisily began to fill the streets. Young Fu, crying his wares with the full 
strength of his lungs, soon
attracted their attention. The throng pressed round him.
" What is it ? What is its use ? " they asked.
 " It is Winter Dragon's Breath come down from
the hills. Hold but a little in your hand and good
fortune will follow through the year. Five coppers
for a touch of it, only five coppers for fortune's
smile! "
Fingers reached out. "Give it to the little Hsien-Seng. Here, small Tamer of Tigers, take it in thy 
hand! It burns thee?
Yes, for a moment; it is the Breath of the Dragon. Wee Sister, do not fear; it is good for thee to 
have it; it will shield
thee from harm."
Trade was thriving, and Young Fu's hands ached with cold. Coppers had been pouring into the little 
money-bag, and
he welcomed a moment's respite as the laughing people moved away. For an hour he stood there, 
alternately selling
snow and thawing his fingers in his sleeves; and at last there was nothing left in each basket but a 
little pool of water.
Young Fu shouldered his baskets and walked towards his own section of the city. Some distance from Hsui's shop,
he sat down on a doorstep and lifted the coin-bag from his belt. He counted carefully - three dollars, and forty coppers
over! Back into the bag he thrust the change, and made directly for Hsui's establishment.
"I wish to pay my debt," he said to Hsui, pushing the money towards him. " Give me the little paper! " The transaction was soon 
completed, and for the first time for weeks Young Fu 
breathed freely. Truly the
Breath of the Dragon had meant good fortune to him.
Young Fu hurried home and told Fu Be Be his story. She was speechless. Reaching into his belt, he 
drew out the
forty coppers. " Here is a New Year's present towards your coffin," he said, and placed them in her 
hands. Her eyes
softened.
" Tell me," he insisted, as he stretched across the table for some fruit: " am I still the most 
stupid member our family
has produced?"
Fu Be Be did not reply. There was no need to remind him that two good dollars of her money had gone 
into the debt.
That he had earned this astonishing amount to-day, and in so unheard-of a fashion, was proof that his 
head was not
empty. She hid the coins under a loose brick in the chimney and smiled to herself. The spirits of 
their ancestors,
hovering at this season over the roof-tree, need not now be ashamed of their young representative's 
actions. A sigh of
relief passed between her lips. Fortune augured well for the coming year!
 The next day at the coppersmith's, Young
Fu did not boast of his adventure, although the
temptation to do so was strong. Only the latter half
of the affair was to his credit, and, if he told, that,
the first part would naturally leak out. Once or twice he was on the point of confiding in his friend,
Small Li, but he held his his tongue. It was just as well that no one else knew how much of a fool, he
had had to be in order to prove his cleverness. Hsui
and the matter of the foreign watch would have to sink into the silent depths of memory, and there remain.
-Abridged from " Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze," by ELIZABETH FOREMAN LEWIS. (Harrap.)

THE BLUE MARBLE.
 Henry Bargery's favourite master at the school
was his own class master, Mr. Brown. Henry would
have found it difficult to say exactly why he liked
him; but he felt that Mr. Brown was a man after
his own heart. He was just, manly, and full of
enthusiasm for his work. He made the boys love the
things he loved himself. Besides being a class
master, he specialized in science and taught in a
room that was provided with a demonstration table
and with desks that rose tier after tier from the
front of the room  to the back. The stepping was
a little steep perhaps, but it enabled all the pupils
to see what was taking place in front of the class.
One day a new boy, named Foss, was admitted to the school and placed in Mr. Brown's class. He was not 
a very
attractive boy. His hair was black and oily, and his eyes, which were rather close together, had a 
peculiar cunning
look. It was clear, however, to Henry and his classmates that Foss wished to be regarded as a bit of 
a hero --- or a
bit of a villain. He bragged a great deal about his escapades at his previous school, and he proposed to show the boys a trick or 
two: " To begin with," he said, " you ought to rag the master. It's great fun."
" You had better not rag Mr. Brown," said Henry.
" Why not? " asked Foss.
" Because," replied Henry, " we like him. He's a good sort and treats us in a friendly kind of way. Besides, if you play
any pranks in his class, you'll be found out and get into trouble. You can never score off him; he'll always get even
with you some way or another."
"Bosh! " cried Foss. "I know a game that's quite safe to play on him, and that's the marble game; and his room is just
right for it too. Somebody sets a marble rolling on the floor, and it slowly dribbles down the steps. If it is likely to
stop, somebody helps it along with his foot. We used to do it in our old school just to annoy the master. He never
found out who did it. It was fun."
Foss found to his surprise that the boys were not impressed. It was evident that he would have to assert himself in a
more practical way.
On the following day Mr. Brown was giving a lesson on oxygen. He had prepared a few jars of the gas, which now
stood on the table ready to be experimented with. He asked the boys to observe what would happen when he inserted
a glowing splinter into one of the jars. He had the splinter ready in his right hand and was just about to lift the lid of a jar with his 
left. The boys watched carefully. There was dead silence in the room. Suddenly came the sound of a small
object rolling on the floor. This was followed by a sharp bang as though the object had dropped down one of the
steps. Then another roll, and another bang. Mr. Brown stood quite still and counted the bangs. One, two, three, four,
five. Then he saw a marble roll close to his feet. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Mr. Brown did not seem in the least disturbed by this interruption. He merely said in his ordinary tone: "Will all the
boys in the fifth row please remain behind after twelve o'clock." Then he went on with the lesson.
At twelve o'clock the class was dismissed - all except the seven boys in the fifth row. Mr. Brown closed the class-room
door and addressed these boys. " One of you," said he, " set a marble rolling down the floor this morning. Which of
you was it?" There was no answer. " If the offender does not own up, I must take further steps." Still no answer.
"Now," said Mr. Brown, " I want everybody to empty his pockets and put the contents on the desk. Every pocket
must be turned inside out, so that I may be sure that it is really empty."
Four of the seven boys had no marbles in their possession. These four were allowed to go home. One of the other
three had a few old marbles with all the colour worn off. He, too, was dismissed. There remained two boys,
Murgatroyd
 and Foss. Murgatroyd had four new marbles and five old ones; Foss had eleven new ones. These eleven were closely
examined by Mr. Brown, and were found to consist of marbles of six different colours. There were two of each colour
except blue, of which colour there was only one.
" Murgatroyd," said Mr. Brown, " how many marbles can you get for a penny at the shop round the 
corner?"
" Twelve, sir," said Murgatroyd.
" And how about the colours! "
"They give you six colours, sir - two of each." "Thank you, Murgatroyd," said Mr. Brown. "You had 
nothing to do with
this business, so you may go home. As for Foss, I have something to say to him."
After Murgatroyd had gone, Mr. Brown took from his pocket the confiscated marble and showed it to 
Foss. It was
new, and it was blue. He placed
it beside the other blue marble lying on the desk, and Foss's set of marbles was complete.
Another quarter of an hour passed before Foss came out of the room. When he did so, the boys that 
were lingering
outside noticed that his face was stained with tears and that he had a general hangdog look about him.
He sulkily
refused to say what had happened in the class-room. That remained a secret between him and Mr. 
Brown. It was
observed, however, that he showed no further inclination to be disorderly in class.
One morning, a short time after this incident, Mr. Brown asked his class to suggest a proverb as a subject for composition. 
Henry's hand went up at once.
"Well, Bargery? "
"Please, sir," said Henry. "A rolling stone gathers no Foss."
There was only one boy in class who didn't laugh.
" Let me suggest a better proverb," said Mr. Brown. " 'Let bygones be bygones.'"
-From " The Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD. (University of London Press.)

THE PERFECT OPTIMIST.
Well, here we are again seated in the big red plush chair, in for one of our jolly little mornings 
with the dentist. My! It
certainly is cosy to settle back into this comfortable chair with a whole quiet morning in front of 
us - no work to do, no
business to think of, just to lie in one of our comfortable daydreams. How pleasant it is in this 
chair, anyway, with the
sunshine streaming in through the window upon us and illuminating every corner of the neat and 
immaculate little
room in which we sit! .
For immaculate neatness and cleanliness, I repeat, give me a little up-to-date dental room every 
time. Talk of your
cosy libraries or your dens, they won't compare with this little nook. Here we are with everything 
we need around us,
all within easy arm's-length reach. Here on this revolving tray are our pleasant little nippers, 
pincers, and forceps,
some so small and cute and others so big and strong that we feel a real confidence in  them. They'd 
never let go of
anything! Here is our  dainty little  electric buzzer with our revolving gimlets at the end ; our 
little hammer on the left; our bradawl on the right - everything!
For the moment our dental friend is out of the room - telephoning, we imagine. The merry fellow is 
so popular with all
his friends that they seem to
ring him up every few minutes. Little scraps of his conversation reach our ears as we lie half-buried 
in our white towel, in a sweet reverie of expectancy.
"Pretty bad in the night, was it, eh? Well, perhaps you'd better come along down and we'll make a 
boring through that bicuspid and see what's there!"
Full of ideas, he is, always like that - never discouraged, something new to suggest all the time. And 
then we hear him say " Well, let me see. I'm busy now for about a
couple of hours-" Hurrah! That means us! We were so afraid he was going to say, "I'll be through in 
about five minutes." But no, it's all right ; we've got two long,
dreamy hours in front of us.
He comes back into the room, and his cheery presence, as he searches among his instruments and gives 
a preliminary buzz to the buzzer, seems to make the
sunshine even brighter. How pleasant life seems - the dear old life ; that is, the life we quitted ten minutes ago and to which we 
hope to return in two hours. We never felt
till we sat here how full and pleasant life is. Think of it, the simple joy of being alive. That's all we ask - of going to work each 
day (without a toothache) and coming home
each night to eat our dinner. If only people realized it - just to live in our world without a 
toothache . . .
So runs our pleasant reverie. But meanwhile our dental friend has taken up a little hammer and has 
tapped us, in his playful way, on the back teeth.
"Feel that? " he asks.
And he's right, the merry dog! We do feel it. He guessed it right away. We are hoping so much that he 
will hit us again. Come on, let's have a little more fun like that.
But no. He's laid aside his hammer, and as nearly as we can see has rolled up his cuffs to the elbow and has started his good 
old electric buzzer into a roar. 
Ah ha! Now we are going to get something - this is going to be the big fun, the real thing. That's the 
greatest thing about our little dental mornings, there's always
something new. Always as we sit we have a pleasant expectancy that our dental friend is planning a 
new surprise.
Now, then, let us sit back while he drives at our jaw with the buzzer. Of all the exhilarating 
feelings of hand-to-hand conflict, of man against man, of mind matched
against mind, and intelligence pitched against intelligence, I know of none more stimulating than 
when we brace ourselves for this conflict of man and machinery. He
has on his side the power of electricity and the force of machinery.
 We are not, however, without resource. We
brace our selves, laughingly, in our chair while he
starts to bore. We need, in fact, our full strength ;
but, on the other hand, if he tries to keep up at this
pace his hands will grow tired. We realize, with a
sense of amusement, that if his machine slips, he
may get a nasty thump on the hand against our jaw-bone. He slacks off for just a second, half withdraws his machine and says, 
"Were you at the
football match yesterday? " and then starts his
instrument again at full roar.
"Were we at the football match yesterday ?"
How strange it sounds. "Why, yes, of course we were! " In that far-away long-ago world where they 
play football and where there is no toothache - we were there only
yesterday afternoon. Yes, we remember, it was just towards the end of that game that we felt those 
twinges in one of the - what does he call it, the lower molars?
Anyway, one of those twinges that started the exultant idea racing through our mind, "To-morrow we'll have to go to the 
dentist."
And now what is he at? Stuffing cotton-wool up into our head, wool 
saturated with some kind of drug, and pounding it
in with a little hammer.
Then, all of a sudden it seems, he steps back and says, " There, that will 
do nicely till Monday!"
And we rise half-dazed from our chair to realize in our disappointment 
that it is over already. Somehow we had
thought that our pleasant drowsy morning of pounding and boxing and 
dreaming in the sunlight, while our dental
friend mixed up something new, would last for ever. And now, all of a 
sudden, it is over.
Never mind! After all, he said Monday! it won't seem so long till then! And 
meantime we can think about it all day and
look forward to it and imagine how it is going to feel.
So we step out into the street-full of cottonwool and drugs and electricity 
and reverie - like a. person returning to a forgotten world and dazed to find it there.
-STEPHEN LEACOCK, in "The Dry Pickwick."
(The Bodley Head.)

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB.
This is the history of a pet lamb which differed mentally from other lambs I have known. One does not look for
anything approaching to marked individuality in that animal; yet sheep do 
show it on occasions, though not in the
same degree as cats and dogs. Goats exhibit more character than sheep, 
probably because we do not compel them
to live in a crowd. Indeed, when we consider how our poor domestic sheep 
is kept, we see that he cannot follow his
own genius, so to speak, without infringing the laws we have made for his 
kind. The shepherd, assisted by his dog,
maps out his whole life for him, and he is not permitted to stray from 
the path in which he is made to walk. If,
however, a lamb be taken from the flock and reared at a farm and given 
the same liberty as cats and dogs and even
many goats enjoy, he will in almost every case develop a character of 
his own.
Let us now come to our subject - Mary's little lamb. It was little to begin with, when my youngest sister, who was not then very 
big herself, and was always befriending forlorn creatures, came in one day from the shepherd's ranch with a young lamb, which 
had unhappily lost its mother. Oddly enough this little sister's name was 
Mary - one seldom hears it in these Doris, Doreen days, but in that distant Mary-Jane-Elizabeth period it was quite common.  
And the motherless lamb she had brought in
grew to be her pet lamb with fleece as white as snow. The whiteness was not 
strange seeing that the lamb was washed every day with scented soap, its beauteous neck beribboned and often decorated with 
garlands of scarlet verbenas, which looked exceedingly brilliant against the snowy fleece. A pretty, sweet-tempered and gentle 
creature it proved; and they were very fond of each other, those two simple
beings; and just as in the old familiar rhyme, wherever Mary went her 
little lamb would go. But there was a little rift
within the lute which by and by would widen till it made the music mute. 
The lamb was excessively playful and frisky,
but its mistress had her little lessons and duties to attend to, and the 
lamb couldn't understand it, and often after frisking and jumping about to challenge the other to a fresh game in vain, it would 
run  away to get up a race or game
of some sort with the youngest of the dogs. The dogs were responsive, so 
that they were quite happy together.
We kept eight dogs at that time; two were pointers, all the others just 
the common dog of the country (South America), a smooth-haired animal about the size of a collie. Like all dogs allowed to exist 
in their own way, they
formed a pack, the most powerful one being their leader or master. They 
spent most of their time lying stretched dog-fashion in the sun fast asleep. They, had little to do except bark at strangers 
approaching the house and hunt off the cattle that tried to force their way through the fences into the plantation. They would also 
go off on hunting expeditions of their own.
They were strange playmates and companions for Libby, as she was named, the pretty pet lamb with fleece as white as snow; yet 
so congenial did 
she find the dogs' society that by and by she passed her whole time with them, day and night.
When they came to the door to bark and whine and wag their tails to call attention to their wants or 
to be noticed, the lamb would be with them but would not cross the threshold since the dogs
were not permitted in the rooms. Nor would she come to her mistress when called, and, having 
discovered that grass was her proper food, she wanted nothing that human beings could give her.
Not even a lump of sugar! She was no longer a pet lamb; she was one of the dogs.
The dogs on their part, although much given to quarrels and fights among themselves, never growled or 
snapped at Libby; she never tried to snatch a bone from them, and she made them a
comfortable pillow when they slept and slumbered for hours at a stretch. And Libby, just to be always 
with them and to do exactly as they did, would sleep too, or rather, she would lie stretched
out on the ground pretending to sleep, always with the head of one of the dogs pillowed on her neck. 
Two or three or four of the other dogs who had failed to secure the pillow would lie round her
with their heads pressed against her fleece. They would form a curiously amusing group.
Then if a shrill whistle was emitted by someone, or the cry of " Up and at 'em! " the lamb would 
spring like lightning to her feet, throwing the drowsy dogs off, and away she would dash down the
avenue to find out what the trouble was. Then the dogs, shaking off their sleep, would start off and 
perhaps overtake her a couple of hundred yards away.
Most amusing of all the lamb's acting was when the dogs had their periodical hunting fits, and went off for half a day's vizcacha-
hunting on the plain. The vizcacha is a big rodent and lives in
communities, in warrens or villages composed of a group of huge burrows' and the native dogs are fond 
of assaulting these strongholds, but seldom succeed in getting at their quarry.
 On several occasions when riding in the plain
a mile or two away from home, I would come on
our dogs - the entire pack and the lamb with them,
engaged in the siege and assault of a vizcacha
village or earth. A funny sight! The dogs would
jump up barking and wagging their tails as if to
say, " Here we are, you see! Just in the middle
of our fight with no time to spare for friendly
conversation." And back they would fly to their
burrows. The lamb too would dance up to give me
a welcome and then back to her duties! Her part
was to go frisking about from burrow to burrow,
now taking a flying leap over the pit-like mouth,
then diving down to see how things were
progressing inside, where the dog was tearing at
the earth and trying to force himself in and
keeping up a running dialogue of threats and
insults with the beast inside.
But though Libby, in these her dog days, was a continual joy to us, we thought it best for her own sake to put an end to them. In 
spite of her activities she was in very good condition, and any
poor gaucho, who came upon her hunting with our dogs a few miles from home, would be justified in 
saying, " Here is a good fat animal without an ear-mark, consequently without an owner; and
though I find it in company with Neighbour So-and-So's dogs, it can't be his since he has put no mark on it, and as I've found it
I have a right to it, and I am quite sure its flesh when roasted will prove tender and savoury."
Accordingly we took Libby away   from  her companions and put her with the flock, where in due time she would learn that a 
sheep is a sheep and not a dog.
Adapted from " The Book of a Naturalist," by W. H. HUDSON. (Hodder and Stoughton.)

JANE AND HER CAT.
Three long years had passed away since Jane had taken in a little stray kitten and had given her the name of Niobe. Niobe had 
at once become a great favourite. She was so
small and soft and furry, and played such queer tricks with thimbles, reels of cotton, and skeins of coloured silk that 
nobody could look at her without smiling. Every
member of the family wanted to stroke her, to pick her up and nurse her, to give her a saucer of milk, and to offer her 
titbits from the table. Visitors
would say she was "such a dear" and would say it as though they meant it.
This was in the early days when Niobe was young and frolicsome; but those days did not last long. As she grew older and 
bigger she lost some of her kittenish ways. She
became more sedate, and developed during the growing period an enormous interest in food. She would station herself
near the chairs of those who had got into the way
of feeding her at table, would stare steadily
at them, and utter a plaintive, petitionary miaow.
Phyllis, who had in fact been one of the first to spoil her, declared her to be a nuisance. Henry said she was all right 
as a cat but badly trained. Mrs. Bargery thought so too,
and urged the family to make it a rigid rule not to feed the cat at irregular hours.
 Then Jane look matters into her own hands,
and there began for Niobe a new regime. Before,
she had been everybody's cat; now she was Jane's
cat. Jane gave her regular meals at regular hours.
 She learnt when to give her a saucer of milk, when
to give her bits of meat, and when to give her a
drink of water. She studied her tastes, and in the
course of time she found the kind of food that suited her best. The outcome of this was that
Niobe grew up to be sound, strong and happy, and amazingly handsome. She was sleek and agile as a 
panther. Her velvet coat glistened when it caught the light, and in the
shadows sank into inky blackness. As she gazed at one from the darkness of a doorway, her large brown eyes seemed to 
glow as with an inner light.
Niobe showed her fondness for Jane in a multitude of ways. She purred when she saw her approach and 
miaowed when she saw her depart When Jane read or studied, the cat
would coil herself at her feet and lie there for hours on end. When Jane woke up in the morning the 
first thing of which she was conscious was a gentle mewing outside her
bedroom door. It was Niobe wishing to say " Good morning."
 In the course of time it came to light that Niobe
was in some strange mysterious way always aware
of Jane's presence in the house. If Jane was away
from home, the cat, was invariably restless and depressed; if she was anywhere in the house, it mattered not where, Niobe would 
settle down quietly on the sitting-room hearth and seem perfectly happy and contented. Stranger and more
mysterious still, the cat seemed to know with
unerring certainty when the absent Jane would
return home. She did not sit on the doorstep and
wait indefinitely for Jane's arrival; she always
came, as Mr. Bargery and Joe noticed, just a
minute or two before the event. She seemed to
sense her young mistress's approach.
 One hot day in August, Jane left London for
the country; she went to spend a fortnight's
holiday at her uncle's farm. On the morning of
 her departure she fed her cat as usual and left
 full instructions as to the way in which she was
to be fed during her own absence
The instructions, however, were of no use, for the cat refused to eat. Nothing would induce her to eat. The family 
tried all sorts of allurements; they offered her cream, fresh milk, choice bits of
meat from the table - all to no purpose. Henry referred to her as Gandhi and tried to treat the matter as a joke. Phyllis remarked 
that the silly old thing would soon grow tired of fasting.
When, however, day after day the cat resolutely refused to touch the food set before her, and soon 
ceased to take the slightest interest in her surroundings, the family began
to be alarmed. By the end of the week things had become serious. The cat was noticeably thinner and 
weaker and was obviously in a bad way. Not wishing to spoil
Jane's holiday,  the family had refrained  from  telling her anything about the cat's strange 
behaviour; but now they   felt they could conceal it no longer. So Jane was told. The letter brought an immediate response. A 
telegram stated that Jane would return by the half-past-eleven train next morning.
 In the morning the poor cat seemed to be
sinking fast. She was too weak to stand or even
to open her eyes. Everybody   in the house was profoundly distressed. It was not so much the cat that they were sorry   for, as 
Jane; they knew how deeply she would feel it, and how poignantly she
would reproach herself if poor Niobe died. They greatly feared, indeed, that she would die, and die before Jane arrived.
 As Mr. Bargery stood on the station platform
waiting for Jane's train, his heart felt as heavy  
as lead. To Jane's first breathless question, " How's
Niobe? " he could only reply, " Don't take it too
much to heart, my dear, but I fear you will find
your poor cat very, very ill."
"Oh, Daddy," she said, "do take a taxi!" "I intend to," said her father.
 The taxi drew up at the corner of Senlip Street.
Out jumped Jane and ran round to the front door; and there on the step stood Niobe looking gravely at her with large solemn eves 
- and purring softly.
" Quick," cried Jane, "a saucer of milk!"
 There was no more fasting for Niobe, and no
more languishing. In a day or two she was herself
again, a little thin perhaps, but full of health and vigour and the joy of life.
The next time Jane went away from home she look the cat with her.
-Adapted from " The "Bargerys," by P. B. BALLARD.
 (University of London Press.)

At the age or thirteen I went to spend my
summer holidays  with my grand-uncle, Robson
Mackay, at. Olrig Mains, Castleten, near Thurso.
He was a retired merchant - a tall white-bearded
old man and a strict Calvinist. His wife was slim
and elderly, always dressed in plain black, with
a black lace cap. Her expression was sad, and I
cannot recall that she ever smiled.
I arrived in darkness, but the next morning I was out before breakfast to explore the place. In a little valley not far off 
was a "planting" - a cluster of small pines and bushes. This gave a certain distinction to the place, because on that level, 
windswept soil, 
trees and hedges are seldom seen, and the fields are bounded by flagstones
set on edge. There were no trees round the house, which stood among grass fields and overlooked a large hayfield in a shallow 
valley about a hundred yards wide and a quarter of a mile long. At the
foot of the hayfield, and shutting it off from the " planting," was a structure which at first I mistook for a disused railway 
embankment crossing the valley. In front it was faced with large stones between which grass was growing, and in the centre of 
the valley it was about twenty feet high. The, back of the embankment, 
three feet wide along the top, was overgrown by thick bushes,
Altogether the prospect was not pleasing. There was no sign of a stream, a lake or a pond, one or other of which was essential to 
my happiness.
During the forenoon I discovered at the corner
of the hayfield, where, the embankment joined the
level ground, the, entrance to a tunnel. It was a square three-foot tunnel, the floor, walls,
and top
being made of paving stones. Into the tunnel I crept on hands and knees. For the first few yards there was a dim light from 
the entrance, but soon the tunnel turned to the right, and I was in
darkness. Somewhere in front of me a rat scuttled away. It was a pity I had not a candle and matches, but no matter, I 
could creep backwards when I wished to return. I crept on until I met
an obstacle. My hands discovered this to be a paving stone, which had fallen from the roof and was lying diagonally across 
the tunnel. I could
not move the stone, but was able to wriggle over
the top of it. Halfway over, hands and head on
one side, feet and legs on the other side of the stone, I stopped. It would be difficult to draw backwards over that obstacle, and I 
had no room to turn in the tunnel. Discretion was the better part of valour, and I 
decided to wriggle back. In a moment my jacket was hitched up under my
armpits and I was stuck.
I lay quite still, breathing heavily, and my
heart was thumping. It was of no use shouting,
for no one would hear, and to struggle might make things worse. I must think, but all I could think was that I should die in 
the tunnel and never be found. No one would dream of looking in the
tunnel, although whenever a dog was lost the first place one looked for him was in the drain.
After a time I saw what seemed to be a glimmer of light some distance in front. At least I could
go on, and the tunnel must come out somewhere. I wriggled forwards, got free of the fallen stone, crept on, turned to the 
left and saw daylight.
The tunnel emerged in a glade in the planting behind the embankment. An 
ideal pirate's lair, with its secret entrance
through which I had come. In the middle of the glade was a little stream 
flowing from a circular brick tunnel at the foot
of the embankment. To return to the house I could make my way through the 
brushwood on the banks of the glade,
or through the tunnel. I hesitated. For a pirate there was only one way. and
 I returned the way I had come.  Soon the
tunnel became quite familiar.
In the afternoon I explored the hayfield, and found in the centre the 
rivulet which ran through the circular brick tunnel
at the foot of the embankment. At the foot and sides of the entrance to 
this tunnel was a fixture of grooved iron. The
mystery  was solved. I was standing at the foot of an unused dam, and 
the tunnel through which I had crawled was
for the overflow. The iron sluice was gone, but a strong wooden board could be made to fit the iron grooves and block
the stream. Little did my grand-uncle know of the possibilities lying at
at his door - a great loch with trout, boats, and perhaps even a steam 
launch. It would be a pleasant surprise.
 For the next week, I cast about for a suitable
piece of wood, but large, strong boards were as
scarce as trees. For the first few evenings, John
McCulloch, the village blacksmith, came to the
house to give us lessons in wood-carving, my
grand-aunt's hobby.  In the wood-carving I was not interested, and the wood only served to remind me of the sluice. At last Satan 
came to help
me, and one morning I entered the smithy. In a corner were a lot of boards, and I had come to
buy a board three feet long, two feet five inches
wide and one and a half inches thick.
"What do you want it for?" asked John McCulloch.
"For wood-carving," said I.
" Well, I'm glad you're taking an interest in wood-carving; Nothing like 
it to keep you out of mischief." He sawed a piece of wood to my measurements
and then planed the edges.
The board slipped easily into the sluice grooves, because I had allowed 
an inch for expansion when submerged. The edges I greased
with lard, and I bored a hole below the middle of the upper edge. Through 
this I passed a strong piece of fencing wire running to the top
of the dam, so that if necessary the sluice could be raised.
 The next morning the water in the rivulet was a foot deep. At that rate it would take weeks for the dam to fill, but the time of 
waiting could
be occupied in building a raft. I asked one of the sons of the Auld Kirk minister, a boy of my own age, if he would join me in 
building a
raft. He laughed. " A raft with no place to
sail it, and three miles from the sea!"
"That's all you know," I said. "Come with
me and I'll show you something." In the first
place I took him down to the tunnel, where I
now kept candles and matches, and in the Pirate's
Lair swore him to secrecy. He had been born in
the district, but the tunnel was a revelation. To the
boy's credit, when I told him what was happening
on the other side of the dam, he wished to have
nothing to do with it. I pointed out that he had
nothing to do with the main project, and that no
one could blame him for building a raft. At last
he agreed and we set off for a field at the back
of his house.
That afternoon rain fell in torrents, and continued all night. At seven 
the next morning
I awoke and rushed to the window. At first glance I felt unsteady, and then realized the thrill of 
achievement. It was a wonderful, almost awful
sight. In place of the hayfield was a loch, or lake, with waves on it, and the shore was only twenty 
yards from the house. At the dam the water was nearly up to the top. I dressed
 and went downstairs. In the hall a maid was unlocking and opening the front door. She saw the loch 
and raised her hands above her head. " Mercy on us! " She turned and ran
past me to inform the mistress.
At the dam everything was in order, and the water was swirling down the overflow tunnel, full almost 
to the top. As soon as the water fell, I must go down the tunnel and smash
up the dislodged stone lest it should block the water-way. I walked along the top of the dam. 
Everywhere it felt as steady as a rock. I had read that when a dam is going to
burst there are warning tremblings in the structure. I would be able to assure my grand-uncle at breakfast that there was not the 
slightest danger.
On the way back  to the house I met my grand-uncle and aunt coming to meet me. The old man leaned on his stick and was 
trembling with excitement. Both spoke 
at once: "Is this your work, boy? ',
"It's a mercy your uncle didn't see it first, or he might have had a stroke."
"Yes, Uncle, but its quite safe," I answered.
He turned to his wife. "This mischief must be undone at once. Send for John McCulloch." With that he went back to the house.
"There's no need, Aunt," I said, "to send for John McCulloch. If you want the dam emptied I can do it myself."
"How did you close the sluice?
"With a piece of board."
" Where did you get it? "
" I bought it from John McCulloch."
" From John McCulloch! " exclaimed my aunt.
"Yes, and I can easily pull it up."
She went with me to the middle of the dam, where I found the wire and began to pull the sluice-board. 
It did not move. I pulled harder; the wire slipped through my hands and
fell into the water. I began to take off my shoes. " I'll dive for it," I said.
" You'll do nothing of the kind. You'll be caught in the reeds and drowned. It's bad enough as it is."
" I shan't be drowned. There are no reeds, and I know exactly what it is like down there."
She pointed to the house. "You march straight back to that house for your breakfast."
At breakfast there was silence, and after breakfast John McCulloch and three men arrived and crashed 
their way through the planting to the Pirate's Lair. I followed at a safe
distance and watched their operations. They cut down the largest pine they could find, and made the 
trunk into a battering ram. This they pushed into the circular brick tunnel
and struck the thick end with sledge-hammers. After a few blows there was a loud hissing noise in the 
tunnel.
" That's it, lads! " said McCulloch. " One or two more."
After the next blow the battering-ram began to move backwards, the men jumped aside, and the largest 
jet of water I had ever seen shot into the
Pirate's Lair, now a roaring torrent, on which the pine tree disappeared down-stream. The men 
departed, but I stayed for a time to watch the last entertainment the dam would
provide.
John McCulloch never forgave me. Years later, motoring through Caithness, I stopped at the smithy, now 
a garage, for petrol, and asked the lad that served me if John
McCulloch was still there. John himself came forward, but did not offer his hand. "So you've come 
back? " he said.
"Yes, I see you remember me."
"No one is likely to forget you, or the day's work you did here."
I went away feeling like the prodigal son who has been butted by the fatted calf.
-Adapted from "A Time to Keep," by HALLIDAY SUTHERLAND. (Geoffrey Bles, Ltd.)

EVACUATED
 ---Punch.] 
THEY CALL IT SPRING, MUMMY, AND THEY HAVE ONE EVERY  YEAR DOWN HERE."

PAUL AND MRS. PIPCHIN.
[When little " old-fashioned " Paul Dombey was five years old, he was sent to Brighton to stay at the establishment of a Mrs. 
Pipchin in the hope that the sea, air would make him stronger and healthier.]
The celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady of a stooping 
figure, with a mottled face like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye,
which looked as though it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. 
Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had broken Mr.
Pipchin's heart and caused his death; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead sombre shade that 
gas itself couldn't light her up after dark,
and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as " a great 
manager " of children; and the secret of her management was to give
them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they did - which was found to sweeten their 
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady that one was
tempted to believe that there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and 
that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness had been
pumped out dry, instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the soil was 
more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more
than usually brittle and thin; where the small front gardens had the unaccountable property of 
producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where
snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors and other public places they were 
not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses.
The Castle was not a fresh-smelling house; and
 in the window of the front parlour, which was
 never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of
 plants in pots which imparted an earthy flavour
of their own to the establishment. However
 choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were
 of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment
of Mrs. Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen specimens
of the cactus, round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another shooting, out
broad claws, like a green lobster; creeping
 vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves;
and one uncomfortable flower-pot, which
appeared to have boiled over, tickling people
 underneath with its long green ends and reminding
them of spiders, in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific.
Mrs. Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could afford to pay, and Mrs. Pipchin very  seldom sweetening 
the acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old lady of remarkable firmness, who was
quite scientific in her knowledge of the childish
character. On this reputation, and on the broken
 heart of Mr. Pipchin, she had contrived, taking
 one year with another, to eke out a tolerably
sufficient living since her husband's demise. Now
this excellent old lady had the satisfaction of anticipating
 a handsome addition to her current
receipts from the pocket of Mr. Dombey; and of
receiving Florence and her little brother, Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
 Mrs. Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood reviewing the newcomers, like an old soldier. Mrs.
Pipchin's middle-aged niece, her good-natured and
devoted slave, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey,  the only   other little 
boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle 
Dungeon, an empty apartment at the back devoted to correctional purposes, for having sniffed thrice in the presence of visitors.
"Well," said Mrs. Pipchin to Paul, "how do you think you shall like me? "
" I don't think I shall like you at all," replied Paul. "I want to go away. This isn't my house."
" No. It's mine," retorted Mrs. Pipchin.
" It's a very nasty one," said Paul.
" There's a worse place in it than this though," said   Mrs. Pipchin, " where we shut up our bad boys."
 "Has he ever been in it?" asked Paul, pointing
out Master Bitherstone. Mrs. Pipchin nodded assent:
and Paul had enough to do for the rest of that day in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot,
and in watching all the workings of his countenance,
with the interest attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.
 At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the
farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey
(a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was
shampooed every morning and seemed in danger of
being rubbed away altogether) was led in from
captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed that
nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to
Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly
impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and
subsequently she said a form of grace established in
the Castle, in which there was a special clause thanking Mrs. Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs. Pipchin's
niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs. Pipchin,
whose constitution required warm nourishment, made
a special repast of mutton chops, which were brought
in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very
nice.
As it rained after dinner and they couldn't go out walking on the beach, and Mrs. Pipchin's constitution required rest
after chops, they went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the dungeon, an empty room looking out upon a chalk wall and a 
water butt, and made ghastly by a ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened 
by company,
however, this was the best place, after all; for Berry played with them there and seemed to enjoy a 
game of romps as
much as they did; until Mrs. Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until 
twilight.
For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with a little black tea-pot for 
Mrs. Pipchin and
Berry, and buttered toast unlimited for Mrs. Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the chops. Though Mrs.
Pipchin got very greasy outside over this dish, it did not seem to lubricate her internally at all; 
for she was as fierce as
ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs. Pipchin took her roll 
instead of toast, and
seemed a little more irate when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree 
from Genesis,
getting over the names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling  up the treadmill. That done, 
Miss Pankey
borne away to be shampooed, and Master Bitherstone to have something done to him with salt water, from which he always 
returned very blue and dejected
Paul and Florence went out in the meantime on the beach with Wickam (their nurse), and at about noon Mrs. 
Pipchin
presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not encourage a child's 
mind to develop
and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was 
usually of a violent and
stunning character: the hero - a naughty boy - seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off by anything less than a lion 
or a bear.
Such was life at Mrs. Pipchin's. At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire for
any length of time. He never seemed to know what weariness was when he was looking fixedly at Mrs. 
Pipchin. He
was not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she seemed to have 
a grotesque
attraction for him. There he would sit, warming his hands and looking at her, until he quite 
confounded Mrs. Pipchin,
ogress as she was. Once she asked him when they were alone what he was thinking about.
" You," said Paul, without the least reserve.
" And what are you thinking about me? " said Mrs. Pipchin.
" I'm thinking how old you must be," said Paul.
" You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman," returned the dame. " That will never do."
"Why not? " asked Paul.
"Because it's not polite," said Mrs. Pipchin snappishly.
"It's not polite," said, Paul innocently, " to eat all the mutton chops and toast, Wickam says."
" Wickam," retorted Mrs. Pipchin, colouring, "is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced  hussy."
"What's that? ", inquired Paul.
"Never you  mind," retorted Mrs. Pipchin. "Remember the story of the little boy who was gored to death by a mad bull for asking 
questions."
"If the bull was mad," said Paul, " how did he know that the boy had asked questions? Nobody  can go and whisper secrets to a 
mad bull. I don't believe that story."
"You don't believe it, sir? " said Mrs. Pipchin
"No," said Paul.
"Not if it should happen to be a tame bull, you little infidel? " said Mrs. Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed 
himself to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over 
in his mind with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs. Pipchin presently,
that even that old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he had forgotten the subject.
From that time Mrs. Pipchin seemed to have something of the odd kind of attraction towards Paul that Paul had towards her. She 
would make him move his chair to her side of the fire; and there
he would remain in a nook between Mrs. Pipchin and the fender, with all the light of his little face 
absorbed into the black bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle
of her countenance and peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs. Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it 
on pretence of dozing.
Mrs. Pipchin had an old black cat, which usually lay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, 
purring and winking at the fire. The good old lady might have been - not to
record it respectfully - a witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been 
quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they
had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat and Paul and Mrs. Pipchin were constantly to be found in 
their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs. Pipchin, and 
the cat, and the 
fire, night after night, as if it were a book on necromancy in three volumes.
-Adapted from "Dombey and Son," by CHARLES DICKENS.

MISS MATTY'S SHOP.
When we came to the proposal that Miss Matty should sell tea, I could see it was rather a shock to her, not on account of any 
personal loss of gentility involved, but
only because she distrusted her own powers of action in a new line of life, and would timidly have preferred a little more 
privation to any exertion for which she feared she was unfitted. She said, however, she would try; and if she did not do well, of 
course, she could give it up. One good thing about it was, she did not think men ever bought tea; and it was of men particularly 
she was afraid. They had such sharp loud ways with them, and did up accounts and counted their change so quickly! Now, if she 
might only sell comfits to children, she was sure she could please them.
Before I left Cranford everything had been comfortably arranged for her. I had expended my own small store in buying all 
manner of comfits and lozenges, in order to tempt the little people whom Miss Matty loved so much to come about her. Tea in 
bright green canisters, and comfits in tumblers – Miss Matty and I felt quite proud as we looked round us on  the evening before 
the shop was to be opened. 
Martha had scoured the boarded floor to a white cleanness, and it was adorned with a brilliant piece of oilcloth, on which 
customers were to stand before the table-counter. The wholesome smell of plaster and whitewash pervaded the apartment. A very 
small " Matilda Jenkyns, licensed to sell tea " was hidden under the lintel of the new door, and two boxes of tea, with cabalistic 
inscriptions all over them, stood ready to disgorge their contents into the canisters.
I left Miss Matty with a good heart. Her sales of tea during the first two days had surpassed my most 
sanguine
expectations. The whole country round seemed to be all out of tea at once. The only alteration I 
could have desired in
Miss Matty's way of doing business was that she should not have so plaintively entreated some of her 
customers not
to buy green tea, running it down as a slow poison sure to destroy the nerves and produce all manner 
of evil. Their
pertinacity in taking it, in spite of all her warnings, distressed her so much that I really thought 
she would relinquish
the sale of it, and so lose half her custom; and I was driven to my wit's end for instances of 
longevity entirely
attributable to a persevering use of green tea. The final argument was a happy reference of mine to 
the train-oil and
tallow candles that the Eskimos not only enjoy but digest. After that she acknowledged that " one man's meat might be another 
man's poison," and contented herself thenceforward with, an occasional remonstrance, when she thought the  purchaser
was too young and innocent to be acquainted with the evil effects green tea has
produced on some constitutions, and an habitual sigh when people old enough to choose more wisely 
would prefer it.
About a year after Miss Matty set up shop, I
paid her a visit, and when I helped her occasionally in the shop, it gave me no small amusement and
sometimes a little uneasiness, to watch her ways there. If a little child came in to ask for an ounce 
of almond-comfits
(and four of the large kind that Miss Matty sold weighed that much), she always added one more by "way of make-weight" as 
she called it, although the scale was handsomely turned before. When I remonstrated against this, 
her reply was,
" The little things like them so much! " There was no use telling her that the fifth comfit weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made 
every 
sale into a loss
to her pocket; so I remembered the green tea, and winged my shaft with a feather out of her own plumage. I 
told her how
unwholesome some almond-comfits were, and how ill excess of them might make little children. This 
argument
produced some effect, for henceforward, instead of the fifth comfit, she always told them to hold out their tiny palms, into
which she shook either peppermint or ginger lozenges, as a preventive to dangers that might 
arise from the previous sale.
Altogether, the lozenge trade conducted on these principles did not promise to be remunerative; but I 
was happy to find
that she had made more than twenty pounds during the last year by her sales of tea. Moreover, now she was 
accustomed
to it, she did not dislike the employment, which brought her into kindly intercourse with many of the 
people round
about. If she gave them good weight, they in their turn brought many a little country present to the 
" old rector's
daughter ": a cream cheese, a few new-laid eggs, a little fresh ripe fruit, a bunch of flowers.  The counter was quite loaded with 
these offerings sometimes, as she told me.
One afternoon, as I was sitting in the shop
parlour with Miss Matty, we saw a gentleman go slowly past the window, and then stand opposite
the door as if looking for the name that we had so carefully hidden. He took out a double eyeglass
and peered about for some time before he could
discover it. Then he came in. His clothes had an out-of-the-way foreign cut about them, and his face
was deep brown as if tanned and retanned by the 
sun. His complexion contrasted oddly with his
plentiful snow-while hair, his eyes were dark and
piercing, and he had an odd  way of contracting
them and puckering up his cheeks into innumerable wrinkles when he looked earnestly at objects. He did so to Miss Matty when 
he came in.
She was a little fluttered and nervous, but no more so than she always was when any man came into her 
shop. She
thought that he would probably have a note, or a sovereign at least, for which she would have to give 
change, which
was an operation she very much disliked to perform. The present
customer, however, stood opposite to her, without asking anything, only looking fixedly at her as he 
drummed on the
table with his fingers. Apparently he was at a loss, for he looked round at last in search of 
something to buy, and as it
happened his eye caught on the almond-comfits, and he boldly asked for a pound of "those things." I doubt if Miss Matty had a 
whole pound in the shop, and, besides the unusual magnitude of the order, she
was distressed with the idea of the indigestion they would produce, taken in such unlimited 
quantities.
She looked up to remonstrate. Something of tender relaxation in his face struck home to her heart. 
She said, " It is -
oh, sir, can you be Peter? " and she trembled from head to foot. In a moment he was round the table 
and had her in
his arms.
"I have been too sudden for you, Matty," he said.  I thought the best thing I could do was to run and 
put the kettle
on for early tea, leaving the brother and sister to exchange some of the many thousand things they 
must have to say.
But Miss Matty could hardly drink for looking at him, and as for eating, that was out of the question.
" I suppose hot climates age people very quickly," said she, almost to herself. " When you left 
Cranford you had not a
grey hair in your head."
"But how many years ago is that? " said Mr. Peter, smiling.
" Ah true! Yes, I suppose you and I are getting old, but still I did not think we were so very old. 
But white hair is very becoming to
you, Peter," she continued, afraid lest she had hurt him in revealing how his appearance had 
impressed her.
I don't believe Mr. Peter came home from India as rich as a nabob; he even considered himself poor, 
but neither he nor Miss Matty
cared very much about that. At any rate, he had enough to live upon "very genteelly" at Cranford, he 
and Miss Matty together. And a
day or two after his arrival the shop was closed, while troops of little urchins gleefully awaited 
the shower of comfits and lozenges
that came from time to time down upon their faces, as they stood up-gazing at Miss Matty's 
drawing-room windows. Occasionally
Miss Matty, half-hidden behind the curtains, would say to them, " My dear children, don't make yourselves ill "; but a strong arm 
pulled her back, and a more rattling shower than ever descended.
-Abridged from " Cranford," by MRS. GASKELL.

JABBERWOCKY.
  This was the poem Alice read:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths 
outgrabe.
" Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub Bird, and shun The frumious 
Bandersnatch! "
He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought - So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in 
thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as 
it came.
One two! One two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack. He left it dead and with its head He went 
galumphing back.
" And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his  
joy.
"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand! " (She didn't like to 
confess even to herself that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it
seems to fill my head with ideas, only I don't know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something:
that's clear, at any rate. Oh, you seem very clever, sir. Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called 
'Jabberwocky '? "
" Let's hear it," said Humpty Dumpty. " I can explain all the poems that ever were invented - and a good many that haven't been 
invented just yet. " 
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse of the poem.
" That's enough to begin with," Humpty Dumpty interrupted. " There are plenty of hard words there. ' Brillig' means four 
o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner."
" That'll do very well," said Alice, " and 'slithy '?"
" Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy.' ' Lithe' is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau, there are two 
meanings packed into one word."
" I see it now," remarked Alice thoughtfully; and what are ' toves '? "
" Well, 'toves' are something like badgers - they're something like lizards-and they're something like corkscrews."
" They must be very curious-looking creatures."
" They are that," said Humpty Dumpty; "also they make their nests under sundials - also they live on 
cheese."
"And what's to 'gyre' and to 'gimble'? "
"To ' gyre ' is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ' gimble ' is to make holes like a gimlet. "
" And the ' wabe ' is the grass-plot round a sundial, I suppose? " said Alice, surprised at her own 
cleverness.
"Of course it is. It's called ' wabe,' you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it - "
" And a long way beyond it on each side," Alice added.
"Exactly so. Well then, ' mimsy' is 'flimsy' and 'miserable' (there's another portmanteau for
you) ; and a ' borogove ' is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round - 
something like a live
mop."
" And then ' mome raths '? " said Alice. " I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble."
"Well, a ' rath ' is a sort of green pig; but
'mome ' I'm not certain about. I think it's short for 'from home ' - meaning that they'd lost their 
way, you know."
"And what does ' outgrabe ' mean?"
"Well, 'outgribing' is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle; 
however, you'll
hear it done, maybe - down in the wood yonder - and when you've once heard
it, you'll be quite content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you? "
" I read it in a book," said Alice.
- LEWIS CARROLL, in " Through the Looking-Glass."

THE BOXING MATCH.
One evening, a month after term began, I was talking to the excellent Sergeant Morley, who taught 
drill and boxing.
"Any of the new boys any good, Sergeant?"
" Only one, and he's a beauty."
"Who's that?"
"I've told one or two, and they won't believe me. No. I shan't tell you. You watch out for the 
competition; and mark my
words."
I ran my eye mentally over the sturdiest and most promising of the new arrivals, but could think of 
only one probable,
and he didn't learn boxing. My curiosity aroused, I asked a couple of boxers, telling them what the 
Sergeant had
said. They looked at each other meaningly.
" Sergeant Morley keeps on saying how good Lewis is, sir," said one. " But -"
" Lewis! "
"Yes, sir. Makes a regular pet of him."
"I think, sir, it's just to encourage him, so that he won't think himself hopeless."
I had seen no sign of Lewis's thinking himself hopeless, but otherwise this idea seemed likely 
enough; and I gave
the matter no more thought till the competition came on. It was not really a competition, but a show 
in which
everyone learning boxing took part. The Sergeant picked out a suitable
partner for each boy, and the pair boxed two or three short rounds. The whole affair was a good deal 
more lighthearted
and ladylike than some of us would have wished, but boxing was not in those days taken very seriously 
at this
particular school.
We watched and applauded as the bouts went their accustomed way. They varied as usual from the 
nervous and
unwilling who sparred respectfully at each other from a safe distance, to the
over-anxious who rushed together, pommelling fiercely, and had to be dragged apart before they could 
land a blow.
Several of the fighters showed skill and coolness, for the Sergeant was an excellent instructor. One 
nose was made
to bleed, causing the headmaster's wife to send anxious glances towards her husband. He avoided her glances,
whereupon she turned to the matron. Before anything could
happen, the tactful Sergeant stepped in with, "That's enough to-day," and honour was saved.
I was anxious to see Lewis, and wondered who his opponent was to be. Not till the end was the mystery 
solved. The
Sergeant announced that the next contest would be something of a novelty. One of this term's 
beginners, he said,
would face a complete novice who had never
before done any boxing
There was a buzz of interested chatter, as into the ring came Lewis looking dreamier than ever, and a 
boy whom we
shall call Flaherty. Flaherty was two years older, about a stone and a half heavier, and as tough a 
specimen of the
fighting Irishman as the school had ever possessed. He took the ring with an abashed smile. How the 
Sergeant had
persuaded him to appear, I don't know; certainly not by suggesting that he would have an easy time 
for there was no
credit to be had from scoring off so puny a specimen as Lewis, and Flaherty was of the type that is 
interested only in
the scrap against someone bigger than himself.
The comments of the onlookers made poor Flaherty feel more foolish still. The Sergeant's tremendous 
voice arose in
a sudden bark for order, and Flaherty, smiling apologetically, walked up to his opponent and shook 
hands. Lewis
appeared surprised to see him in the ring, but not so far as to wonder what he was doing there. 
Flaherty waited a second, squared up perfunctorily, and approached his skinny partner. Lewis raised his eyebrows, 
reached out a
languid glove, and poked him absent-mindedly on the nose.
Flaherty blinked, and stepped forward again, still smiling. The glove again met his nose. Someone 
laughed, and,
finding the tiresome creature still there, Lewis leaned forward and prodded the nose a third time. 
Then he stepped
away as if bored by the whole proceeding.
His smile a little set, Flaherty went after him. Once more the left went out and caught him in the 
same place, this
time more smartly. There was a general laugh. Flaherty's temper, always quick, began to rise. It was 
all very well to
get into the ring and give the poor little beast Lewis a show, but that didn't mean he had to let him 
swat him on the
nose. He aimed a reproving clip at Lewis's ear. It did not land. Instead, Flaherty received another 
prod on the nose,
sharp enough to bring water to his eyes.
A chorus of cries and laughter went up. The Sergeant, who had been watching with covert delight, 
looked round and
roared for order. That settled Flaherty. His good resolutions gone, he rushed angrily at this 
miserable little squirt, to
show him where he got off.
The next minute was an object lesson. I had often read of science opposed to brute force, and heard 
of fighters
reduced to impotence by a boxer's skill, but I had never before seen the thing happen in its simplest 
form. Flaherty,
tough, strong, and steady, making full use of his weight in terrier-like rushes, could not touch the 
dreamy wisp in front
of him. Lewis looked so frail that the mere wind of Flaherty's rushes should have blown him over. He 
did nothing but
side-step and retreat, each time sticking out that straight left with languid, academic precision, avoiding Flaherty's swings so 
negligently that they
seemed to be missing him by sheer accident.
When the end of the round was called, Flaherty was angry, puzzled and blowing hard, his nose and 
mouth pink from
repeated attention, his eyes bright with involuntary tears. He relaxed into a good-natured grin as his 
seconds dealt
with him, but he was obviously impatient for the rest to be over, and anxious to get at his tormentor. As for Lewis, he
looked pale to the point of collapse, but not in the least distressed.
When the second round started, Flaherty put his head down and went for his man. This time, despite 
that prodding left, he succeeded in rushing Lewis into a corner. Very reluctantly, Lewis was obliged to use both 
hands in order to
extricate himself. Clip, clop, a dexterous wriggle, the corner was suddenly empty, and Flaherty found 
his nose up
against the ropes.
He turned and rushed. Back went his head, this time from a really stiff one. One swing had landed 
while they were in
the corner, and Lewis disapproved of it. It did not do to let this fellow get to close quarters. He 
moved a bit faster after
that, and the left popped out more vigorously. Before the two minutes were up, Flaherty had stopped, 
panting, his
arms at his sides, fought to a standstill.
The beauty of the whole show had been that not two of those blows were the same. The child moved 
instinctively, so
that with the minimum of exertion, he could hold his opponent off. He lacked all aggression, never 
doing more than
was necessary to rid himself of this nuisance which kept coming at him and would not let him be. His feet moved, with lazy 
speed, so that he was never bothered and never out of distance. 
He received the congratulations and applause with the same puzzled air, and slipped away into the crowd of spectators, obviously 
not seeing what all the fuss was about, and glad to be left at peace.
-Adapted from " Shake Hands and Come Out Fighting,'' by L. A. G. STRONG. (Chapman and Hall.)

THE LETTER.
[Many years had passed since Yung Len had come from the country to Shanghai to make a fortune for his family. He had been 
forced, alas, to become a ricksha coolie, and the chances of his ever achieving his ambition were becoming more and more 
remote. Our story is of his receiving a letter from  his son, whom he had not seen 
since the boy was a baby. Lung Yen had been paying for the day's hire of his ricksha.]
" Is your name Yen, Lung Yen?" the clerk asked, just as Yen was turning to go.
"That is right; Lung Yen is my unworthy name," Yen said. He had lost his great name, the name of his 
family, since
he had been in the city, and now it seemed strange to him.
" There's a letter here for Mr. Lung Yen," the man said ironically. He flipped the letter through the 
grating, and it fell on
the dirty boarded floor. Yen snatched it up and pretended he could read the address. "Yes, the letter 
is for me," he
said; for, even though he could not read a single character, he still had eyes and knew what letters 
from home looked
like: they had a face, as people said, by which one could recognize them.
First of all he sat in his ricksha in the street and looked at the letter on both sides and smelt it. 
There might be larger
and thicker letters, but this one was good enough for him. After enjoying the
sight and feel of it to the full, he put it in his belt, where he also carried the little linen bag 
containing his money. He
had sixteen cents, and he also had a letter from home. The excitement had caused a sudden pang of 
hunger. I can
eat later, he thought impatiently, for he wanted to know what was in the letter.
" I have got a letter from my son," he called to every coolie he even knew by sight. They all laughed 
back and
shouted, " A virtuous son is better than money,'' or some such polite remark. He was on the point of 
crossing the
Great Foreign Street in defiance of the raised arm of the policeman. " Gandu! " the policeman shouted 
at him. " I
have a letter from my son," Yen replied, and, although the brown straw-hatted Annanite probably 
understood little of
what he said, he laughed all the same at the coolie's beaming face.
The letter writer to whom Yen took his precious letter was a poor but cultured man. He had held high 
positions in the
days when the Manchus still sat on the Dragon Throne. He was still dressed as a mandarin in a silk robe, jacket and black cap, 
and he wore a long thin venerable beard and eyeglasses with thick horn rims. He was 
endowed with a
capacious and far-reaching memory, and he recognized Yen at once, although it was more than a year 
since Yen had
had his last letter from home and replied to it. The old mandarin took his time, for leisureliness is 
the mark of
education. Yen too endeavoured not to show any impatience for fear of seeming impolite. Several 
inquisitive people
immediately collected round the open booth, for they too wanted to know what was in Yen's letter, and he was proud of the 
interest they showed. At last the letter was opened, unfolded and held before the lenses of the learned man.
" This letter is written with a new-fangled pen, not with a paint-brush," he informed Yen, as he 
looked at him over his
glasses. He inspected the writing once more. " It seems to have been written by a child who has no 
character as yet
and understands nothing of calligraphy," the revered man went on, while Yen felt his ribs vibrating 
with excitement.
"The letter was written on the eighteenth day of the seventh month," the old man next observed. "It 
comes from the
village of Chingsan in the province of Kiangsu. It is astonishing how quickly letters arrive now that 
the fire wagons run
all through the country. When I was young …"
He went on to a brief description of the journeys on foot he had undertaken as a young man in the 
manner of the
ancient scholars, who journeyed from village to village with a staff and hollow gourd, as free from 
care as the birds.
Yen folded his hands and listened respectfully, until at last his impatience got the better of him. "The letter, revered
sir? " he reminded him submissively. And now the old man took up the letter and read it aloud without further interruption.
" Father, exalted person, I hand you this letter on my knees. It is long since I received any 
instructive words from
you. I am full of care. I wish that the body of the exalted person is in peace. For long I have stood 
on my toes to
look to the east in the hoped-for joy of being permitted to give my father the morning and the 
evening tea.
"On the seventh day of the eighth month I shall come with many other children to Shanghai, where we 
are holding a
festival and rally of all Boy Scouts for several days. We shall be divided into Hsiangs and live partly in tents, partly in barracks. 
My Number is 174, Hsiang Chongshi. If
the exalted person will take the trouble to inquire at the town hall in the Civic Centre, then my 
father will receive exact
information of where his worthless son may be found. I can scarcely wait for the day when we journey 
to the great
city. Confucius tells us: From our fathers we received body, hair and skin; therefore it is our duty 
to keep them unharmed.
 " On my knees I give you this letter and most
humbly wish you ten thousand times  bliss and golden peace.
" Your son,
" Lung Seileong.
"Chinese Republic, in the twenty-sixth year in the seventh month, on the eighteenth day."
Yen listened to this astonishing mixture of modern schooling and Confucian politeness as though 
fairies had come
down from every heaven to make music for him. He did not understand in the slightest degree what it 
meant. The old
mandarin read the letter three times, at a cost of three coppers the first time, and one for every 
other. After the third
reading he folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. " Happy news, my elder brother," he said with great friendliness, 
"and a well-written letter from a son to his father. You must be very happy to be seeing the child again so soon."
Yen still sat with an almost idiotic smile of joy on his emaciated face. His son could write and he wrote to him. His son, his son, 
Lung Seileong. The whole audience murmured congratulations and good wishes.
" What is the meaning of the letter?" Yen asked as though awakening from a dream.
" It means that your son will arrive in this city in ten days from now, and that you will be taken to 
him if you give his
name and number in at the town hall in the Roing-woung," the letter writer said patiently.
Yen was completely at sea. " What number?" he asked again and again. " Where is the house where I 
must say this
number? Is there a secret about it? What are Scouts? I do not want my son to be a soldier and a 
bandit."
It was some time before the old mandarin could explain it all to the coolie. In addition, he made him 
a present, for he
wrote various directions on a piece of paper and charged nothing for it. He wrote them on paper ruled 
with red lines,
with his fine brush and put it in a red envelope, because red is the colour of good fortune and 
gifts. Yen put the writing
devoutly in his money-bag.
It was only then that he went to the old Willow Tree tea-house and asked for tea and rice. He told everyone that would listen to 
him about the visit of his son. He talked so much and so loudly that the Mahjong players murmured a request for less noise. After 
this he stood for a time on the zigzag bridge and looked at the turtles in the green,
stagnant water. He loitered about the bird market and listened to the song of an oriole. It was a golden bird called Ying and his 
grandfather had had one.
-From " Nanking Road," by VICKI BAUM. (Geoffrey Bles.)

IN A SECOND-HAND BOOKSHOP.
It had always been my ambition to own a second
hand bookshop or, failing that, to work in one. Whenever I passed one such shop in the town, I gazed longingly in through the
door. The bookseller looked such a benevolent old man that one day I plucked up courage to enter. He came forward smiling.
"What can I do for you? " he asked.
"I was wondering," I said, amazed at my own courage, " if by any chance you wanted an assistant."'
" Well, now," said the bookseller, " it's strange that you should come in to-day. My usual assistant
is in hospital, and I was just wondering what to do." It seemed too good to be true, and I could hardly
believe my good fortune when the bookseller engaged  me for a three months' trial.
The next morning, wearing a very efficient-looking brown over-all, I presented myself at the shop. The first hour was spent in
seeing over it, and learning where the various classes of books were kept. The shop was long and narrow, the far end being 
shut
off by a curtain. Behind this was the office where the bookseller kept his accounts and carried on his
business. I had had no idea of the amount of business
there is to be done in connection with the buying and selling of old books - bills to be made out, parcels to be packed, and 
descriptions of
volumes to be forwarded to other shops.
After about half an hour, I began to have some idea of what was in the shop, though my brain was in a whirl, and I doubted if 
it would ever be
possible to find a single volume unaided. Then my employer took me down to the cellar, where there were more books - 
hundreds 
and
thousands of them. It made me feel completely helpless to contemplate them. An elderly gentleman working amongst the 
crowded 
shelves
was introduced to me.
" Mr. H.," the bookseller said, when we were upstairs again, " is a retired schoolmaster, who is so fond of old books that he 
spends all his
spare time classifying and putting in order the books in the store room. If you want to know where to find any, book, he will 
tell you." I found
this to be true.
Mr. H. seemed to know every volume as well as if it were a personal friend, and in those first days I paid many visits to the 
basement to ask for help.
Outside the shop in a row of wooden troughs were set out books for sale at very cheap prices. One or two people were usually 
browsing along
the rows, mostly elderly retired persons who, like my schoolmaster friend, lived in the past. Sometimes, however, a schoolboy 
would pick out
a " crib " to help him with his Latin, or a lady would buy a quaint old cookery book.
My first customer was a young lady who chose a most odd assortment. There was one book on astrology and another on 
bee-keeping; a third
was a volume of poems; and she topped the collection with an old German Bible. When I brought her her change, I could not 
help remarking, "You have rather an unusual taste in books."
" Oh, do you think so? " replied my customer, "I thought these were rather nice. Don't you like this one?" She held up the 
book on astrology,
which had a bright red cover decorated with golden stars.
" But are you interested in astrology?" I inquired, still more surprised.
" Oh no, but that doesn't matter," she replied airily. " I shan't be reading what's inside the books; it's the outsides I 
want. I've just had my
room done up and bought some lovely old furniture, and I wanted books to match it. Thank you very much. Good morning." She 
sailed out of
the shop, leaving me looking vacantly after her.
I turned to find a small boy standing beside me - a very serious small boy wearing very large glasses.
" Excuse me," he said, " but have you any books on Lepidoptera?"
"On what? " I asked aghast.
"Lepidoptera - insects, you know," he explained. I managed to unearth one or two simple children's books about insects, but he 
looked at them with scorn.
" No, I don't mean anything childish," he said. "I've read all the standard works, but I thought you might have had something 
fresh." Just then, to my relief, the bookseller 
came out of his office. He knew my young friend, and he got down a book on insects
which he had been keeping for him.
My next duty was to learn how to draw up and send out to other booksellers descriptions of any rare books that came to hand. 
I had to study
two weekly papers published in connection with the second-band book trade, as these contained lists of books wanted by 
members of the
trade for their customers. If we were fortunate enough to possess a book that was
wanted, we despatched a description of it. This description had to be accurate. If the book was in perfect condition it was called 
"mint," but if it was soiled we had to say so as its value  was 
less. I learnt how to
enter up all these particulars, together with the size and colour of the book, whether or not it was 
gilt-edged and
whether the "spine" or backstrip was in sound condition.
The bookseller showed me with pride his shelf of precious " first editions," which are the first 
batches of books struck
off by the publishing press. First editions of books by famous authors may be worth a good deal of 
money. As with
stamps or coins, it depends upon the number of first editions still in existence; the fewer there 
are, the more valuable
they become. A first edition or "Folio," as it is called, of Shakespeare's Plays is worth a fortune.
One day a little lady came into the shop, such a sad little woman dressed in an old-fashioned way. 
She said timidly
that she had some books to sell, and I told her that the bookseller would go to see her books, but 
that I could not
promise that he would buy them.
" Oh," said she, " I do hope he will. My sister has been so poorly, and if I can make a little money 
we can go away
for a little change. Please persuade Mr. B. to come soon. They are beautiful books with lovely 
bindings."
I knew it was the insides, not the outsides, of books that determine their value, but I did not 
discourage her.
When I gave my employer the message, he said, "Suppose you go yourself! It would be good experience for you, and I think you 
know now which books are of value." I was delighted at being entrusted with the 
commission, and I set
off at once for the old lady's house, hoping that some of the library would turn out to be valuable, 
both for her sake and
for my own.
My little friend welcomed me with delight and took me into a study lined with books. While I glanced 
hastily round,
she chattered away, telling me that these books had belonged to her father, and what a good and 
learned man he had
been. But as I looked my heart sank, for I could see at a glance that the books were heavy and 
old-fashioned, not
old enough to be of value, and yet not new enough to be of interest to modern readers. They certainly 
were not worth
enough to take the two old ladies for their holiday. I was searching for the gentlest way of putting 
the unpleasant truth
when my eye fell on a pile of dusty old books on a high shelf.
" What are those up there? " I asked.
" Only rubbish," she replied. " No use at all. These below are the good ones. Look at the lovely bindings."
" I should like to see the old ones," I said firmly. There ensued much fluttering and commotion. A step-ladder was brought, and 
the pile of books lifted down. A newspaper was spread on the heavy plush tablecloth, and a duster was
brought. At last I was able to examine the volumes. I could see at once that they were very old, and I felt my excitement growing, 
especially when I found in the title page of one a sixteenth century date. This book, which seemed the oldest of all, appeared to 
be about plants and herbs. It was printed in queer crabbed black lettering,
illustrated with quaint old drawings, and its, pages were yellow and spotted with age. What had I 
found?
" I shall take this one back with me," I said to the old lady, " and let you know about the rest 
later."
When I showed the bookseller my find, he laid the book on the counter and turned the leaves with loving care. " You are a lucky 
young woman,'' he said. "This is an old herbal - a very rare book indeed. I know a gentleman 
who is collecting herbals, and this
is one he needs to complete his collection. He will pay a good price for it. If the other books you mention are also 
valuable, you will have done a good
afternoon's work."
He was eager to start at once to see the rest of the library. The other old books proved to be valuable, as I had hoped, 
though the herbal was worth the most;
and I had the pleasure of seeing a handsome cheque in my old lady's hands as we said good-night. My last sight of her was as 
she stood happily smiling in
the doorway, watching us depart with the precious parcels of books in our arms. That was the most delightful experience of my 
three happy months in a second-hand bookshop.
-By K. DOHERTY, in "Adventures into Literature, Book I." (Macmillan.) (Adapted.)

A CAR OF MYSTERY.
 Philip was passing a gate in a long brick wall
when there was a grinding of bolts and the gate was
dragged open by a small but very fat girl of seven
or eight. There was thus exposed to view the front
of an ancient and ivy-clad house. Exactly opposite
the front door stood a motor-car of antique design
and dilapidated appearance. From beneath the car
projected a pair of human feet, attached to a pair
of lengthy legs.   The owner of the legs was
apparently doing something painful to the underbody
of the car, from beneath which came a stream of
scoldings of a bloodthirsty but harmless type,
punctuated by the clink of a spanner.
The small  girl, breathing heavily, stooped down to inspect these operations. Presently, adopting a 
more comfortable
but somewhat reptilian attitude, she crawled bodily under the car. Here she came upon the head of 
the mechanic,
who was lying on his back, engaged apparently in the task of removing mud stalactites from the 
bottom of the car with
a spanner. As fast as the stalactites were dislodged they fell into the excavator's eyes or mouth.
"What are you doing, Daddy?" inquired a husky but interested voice in his ear.
" Eating mud," replied the mechanic. " Splendid thing for the digestion, Dumps. Have some?"
"No, thank you," was the dignified reply. "I shall be having a glass of milk at twelve. But I will watch you," added Miss Dumps 
kindly. She
rolled over with some difficulty on to her back, and
lay staring solemnly at the mud-encrusted vault
above her, while her worried parent resumed his
task of digging with the spanner for a buried nut.
"I've opened the gates, Daddy," announced the small lady presently.
" Thank you, madam," replied Mr. Mablethorpe.
"Is the road clear?"
"I saw a boy."
"Trust you for that! Well, we must contrive not to run over him. Just look in my left ear and see if 
you can find a nut,
there's a good girl. I rather fancy I heard it drop in just now. No, don't bother. Here it is in my 
eye. Now we are really
getting
on!" He adjusted the nut to the now exhumed bolt, and began to screw it tight with the spanner. 
Dumps turned her
head and regarded him admiringly. "You are clever, Daddy! " she said.
" You are right," admitted her parent modestly. "I am a wonder. People come simply miles to - Dash and confound the thing! 
Run your finger round the inside of my collar. I think I can feel it lying somewhere round at 
the back." Once
more the fugitive nut was recaptured and replaced, this time permanently. Mr. Julius Mablethorpe wriggled 
painfully from under
the car on to the gravel drive. Then, rising to his knees, he politely dragged his daughter out by 
the heels, and having
first stood her upon her head (in order, as he explained, to give her feet a rest) restored her to 
an upright position, and
surveyed her doubtfully.
" We shall get into trouble with Mother, Dumpling," was his first remark. He was right. At that 
moment the front door
opened and Mrs. Mablethorpe appeared. " Oh, Julius," she said, " you might have prevented that child 
from crawling
about in the mud, too. Baby, go into the house, and ask Nurse to give you a bath at once. Your hands 
and face are
black."
" But I am quite white, Mummy," replied Miss Dumpling, " all over the rest of myself. Look, I'll show 
you! " Before
anyone could stop her the infant rolled her stocking down to her ankle. " There! " she said 
triumphantly. Mr. Mablethorpe caught up his daughter upon his shoulder and carried her shrieking joyfully, to the nursery.
Five minutes later he descended clean and smiling, and set to work to start up his engine. After 
three backfires this
feat was accomplished, and the car, with much burring of gear wheels and slipping of the clutch, 
started off upon its
deafening career. The vehicle in question was an old friend, and like most old friends felt 
privileged to speak its mind
on all occasions, which it did in no uncertain voice. Mr. Mablethorpe having passed safely through 
the gate, turned
sharp to the right and proceeded northward. Presently he came to four cross-roads. At the foot of the 
signpost sat a
small, sturdy, and well-dressed boy, with curly red hair and hazel-green eyes. As the car slowed 
down, in case of
cross-traffic, the boy rose to his feet, and, running up alongside, asked the way to Coventry.
" Coventry must be a good eighty miles from here. Do you propose to walk?" asked Mr. Mablethorpe.
" Yes," replied Philip. Mr. Mablethorpe eyed the pedestrian curiously. " Running away? " he asked. 
"Sort of," admitted Philip.
"Well, I have only one motto in life," said Mr. Mablethorpe, " and that is, 'Mind your own business! ' 
So I will refrain
from comment. I don't know where Coventry is, but I should think you would not go far wrong if you 
kept along this
road and asked again later. Now I must be going." Mr. Mablethorpe had not proceeded far when his 
conscience
smote him. " I might have offered the little beggar a lift," he said to himself. "He had a longish 
journey before him - that
is if Papa doesn't lay him by the heels. I wonder where he is!" He leaned over the side of the car 
and surveyed the
road behind him.
The car, which had been waiting for some such opportunity all the morning, promptly mounted the 
footpath and
charged a hedge. Fortunately it was climbing a hill on its first speed at the time, so the results of 
the impact were not
serious. Mr. Mablethorpe, who was quite accustomed to mishaps of this kind, stopped his engine and 
descended to
earth to review the situation. The first object that met his eye was Philip, a little blown and 
obviously taken by
surprise, standing in the road with his hand still upon the hood.
" Hallo! " remarked Mr. Mablethorpe genially. Still here?"
" Yes," replied Philip. "I thought I would run behind! "
"Better come and sit in front," advised Mr. Mablethorpe. " But first of all we must get Boanerges 
out of the hedge."
" Who? "
" Boanerges. Let me introduce you. I present Boanerges - my superb, four-seated, two-cylinder, one 
dog-power
reaping machine - to - to - Mr. - "
" Philip Meldrum."
" To Mr. Philip Meldrum. Now you know each other. At least, Boanerges knows you; you don't know Boanerges. Come and help 
to shove his ugly face in! "
Philip assisted his new, strange friend to disentangle Boanerges from the hedge and push him back 
into the roadway,
and then he obediently took his seat. He was trembling with pure ecstasy. He was in a motor-car! At 
last he had
stepped from text-books into the realms of reality.
He surveyed the various appliances on the dingy dashboard. There were two switches of the electric light variety, one marked M 
and the other A, which Philip knew stood, the one for Magneto, and the other for Accumulator. 
There was an oil-reservoir with a piston rod protruding from the top, and a glass gauge at one side to show the level of the oil. 
Last of all, 
suspended by its tail
from a drawing-pin, came a clockwork mouse, which had at one time been the property of Dumpling, and was now spending its 
declining years
as a motor mascot.
Meanwhile Mr. Mablethorpe, with the assistance of the starting-handle, had been playing  a monotonous and unmelodious tune 
upon the hurdy-gurdy-like engine. Presently he paused for breath.
" Boanerges takes a lot of starting-up," he explained. "I'll have one more try, and if that fails, we will run him backwards 
down the hill and let the
reverse in. That ought to do it."
" Are you running on magneto or accumulator, sir? " inquired Philip. Mr. Mablethorpe left the starting handle and came 
thoughtfully round to the
side of the car. " I don't seem to be running on either," he remarked. " My mistake! Let us try this little fellow." He 
turned down the switch
marked A, and returned to his labours. The result was a stunning explosion right under Philip's feet.
" That is the first gun," exclaimed Mr. Mablethorpe. " He always gives us three before we start. The first is a protest; the 
second means, ' Drop
it, or there will be trouble!' and the third usually ushers in a conflagration. After that I blow the flames out, and off we go."
But this was too sanguine an estimate. After five resounding backfires the engine still failed to show any signs of abiding 
vitality. Mr.
Mablethorpe therefore took his seat at the wheel, and, releasing the brakes, allowed the car to slide rapidly
backward down the hill. At the same time he performed some complicated movements with his feet. Instantly the car sprang into 
life and
Boanerges, with a playful swerve, shot stern foremost into a bank at the other side of the highway. The bump nearly sent 
Philip somersaulting
backwards into the seat behind. The engine then stopped.
The owner of the car descended once more into the road, and after kicking Boanerges three times in the pit of the stomach - the 
radiator - he
seized the starting-handle and gave it another resolute twirl. This time his efforts were successful beyond all expectation. 
Boanerges promptly
charged forward, nearly pinning his tormentor beneath a front wheel, and proceeded smartly up the hill once more, with Mr. 
Mablethorpe
running frantically alongside and trying to climb into the driver's seat over the spare wheel.
" Another little mistake of mine," he panted, as he finally hopped on board and took the wobbly steering-wheel over from 
Philip. " I left the
gears in the first speed instead of the neutral; but it is all right now. We are off like an Arab steed. Let me oil him up." 
He leaned forward and
began to work the piston in the oil-reservoir with the result that Boanerges, emitting dense fumes of black smoke from his 
exhaust, was soon
breasting the slope with remarkable vigour.
"So you know something about motors?" said Mr. Mablethorpe, as they reached the top of the hill and began to slide 
comfortably down the
other side. " Only out of books," said Phillip. " I have never been in a car before, but I think I understand how the engine 
works, and the
ignition."
" Wonderful! " said Mr. Mablethorpe, " wonderful! Fancy any human creature being able to understand text-books! But I know 
of one thing you never read about in a book, and that was a car 
like this.
Boanerges was built before the printing-press was invented, in the dark ages, in the days of the 
Black Art. This car
was designed by a man without hands or arms - with only feet and teeth. His idea was to steer with 
his teeth and do
everything else with his feet. He therefore began by abolishing gear handles and side-brakes, and 
applied all his
ingenuity to the pedals. Look at this one. If I push it half down, the car stops. If I push it 
two-thirds down, the car
starts again - in the opposite direction - and the engine plays 'I wish I was an Angel' instead of the 
'1812 Overture' as at
present. If I push it seven-eighths down, the radiator boils over, and I can have a shave or a cup of 
tea; and if I put it
right down the car turns inside out and becomes a portable camp bedstead. I won't do that at present, 
because I am
not sleepy."
" Yes, Boanerges is a car of mystery," continued Mr. Mablethorpe presently. "There is a little handle 
arrangement
down here, in the corner of the dashboard. I noticed it one day after I had owned the car for some 
time. I have only
turned it three times. The first time the whole of the back-axle dropped off into the road. The 
second time Boanerges
turned right round and ran over a duck which was asleep on a cottage doorstep behind us. The third 
time a policeman
took my name and address for obstructing a funeral which had been trying to pass me for two hours. 
That was about
seventeen years ago, just after I bought the car. At least, I didn't buy it; it was left to me by my 
great grandmother. I
have never meddled with that handle since."
Philip who had lived in serious company hitherto, and had no idea that grown-up people ever descended 
to nonsense
of this kind, began to like this strange gentleman. He made, however, no
attempt to maintain a conversation with him; he was well content to lean back in his seat and listen.
- -Slightly adapted and abridged extract from "A Knight on Wheels," by IAN HAY.
(Hodder and Stoughton.) 





