his face this way and that, squinting, and making a thousand horrible grimaces.

   "My dear little boy," cried the brother, "why are you making yourself so hideous?"

   "I want to see if I can look like the pictures in the book!" said the child.

   The white frost struck my garden, and blighted my flower of joy. Oh! it was fair, and all the sweetness of the spring breathed from its cup; but now it lay blackened and withered, and my heart with it.

   Then, as I stood mourning, I heard another crying voice; and looking up I saw my neighbour in her garden, bending over her stricken plants and weeping sore. I hastened to her. "Take courage!" I said. "It may be they are not quite dead: for, look! here lingers a little green along the leaves. Look here again, the sap flows. Take heart, and we will work together, you and I."

   So I labored, and she with me, binding up, tending and watering, night and day;

   till at last life came back to her plants, first faltering, then flowing free, and they held up their heads and drank the sunshine, and opened fair and sweet to the day.

   Then, with her blessing warm at my heart, I turned me homeward: and oh! and oh! in the ruined garden where all lay black and prone, a thread of green creeping, a tiny bud peeping, a breath of spring upon the air. Glad woman, I fell upon my knees, and stretched out trembling hands to where, faint and feeble, yet alive, bloomed once more my flower of joy.

   Some neighbours were walking together in the cool of the day, watching the fall of the twilight, and talking of this and that; and as they walked, they saw at a little distance a light, as it were a house on fire.

   "From the direction, that must be our neighbour William's house," said one. "Ought we not to warn him of the danger?"

   "I see only a little flame," said another; "perchance it may go out of itself, and no harm done."

   "I should be loth to carry ill news," said a third; "it is always a painful thing to do."

   "William is not a man who welcomes interference," said a fourth. "I should not

   like to be the one to intrude upon his privacy; probably he knows about the fire, and is managing it in his own way."

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