Sometimes at night, after the day’s work is over, the ducks have come home, and the stars have come out, she sits at the door of the boat-house, and watches the great bright fireflies over the marshes, and thinks of the blue lake Syhoo, covered with lilies, where gilded boats are sailing, and the people seem so happy.

Up in the high-walled garden of the great house on the hill, the night-moths have spread their broad, soft wings, and are flitting among the flowers, and the little girl with the small feet lies on her silken bed, half asleep.  She, too, thinks of the lake and the lilies, but she knows nothing about Pen-se, who lives down upon the river.

See, the sun has gone from them.  It must be morning for us now.

THE LITTLE DARK GIRL.

In this part of the world, Manenko would certainly be considered a very wild little girl.  I wonder how you would enjoy her for a playmate.  She has never been to school, although she is more than seven years old, and doesn’t know how to read, or even to tell her letters; she has never seen a book but once, and she has never learned to sew or to knit.

If you should try to play at paper dolls with her, she would make very funny work with the dresses, I assure you.  Since she never wore a gown or bonnet or shoes herself, how should she know how to put them on to the doll?  But, if she had a doll like herself, I am sure she would be as fond of it as you are of yours; and it would be a very cunning little dolly, I should think.  Perhaps you have one that looks somewhat like this little girl in the picture.

Now I will tell you of some things which she can do.

She can paddle the small canoe on the river; she can help to hoe the young corn, and can find the wild bees’ honey in the woods, gather the scarlet fruit when it is fully ripe and falls from the trees, and help her mother to pound the corn in the great wooden mortar.  All this, and much more, as you will see, Manenko can do; for every little girl on the round world can help her mother, and do many useful things.

Would you like to know more of her,—­how she looks, and where she lives, and what she does all day and all night?

Here is a little round house, with low doorways, most like those of a dog’s house; you see we should have to stoop in going in.  Look at the round, pointed roof, made of the long rushes that grow by the river, and braided together firmly with strips of mimosa-bark; fine, soft grass is spread all over this roof to keep out the rain.

If you look on the roof of the house across the street you will see that it is covered with strips of wood called shingles, which are laid one over the edge of the other; and when it is a rainy day you can see how the rain slips and slides off from these shingles, and runs and drips away from the spout.

Now, on this little house where Manenko lives there are no shingles, but the smooth, slippery grass is almost as good; and the rain slides over it and drips away, hardly ever coming in to wet the people inside, or the hard beds made of rushes, like the roof, and spread upon the floor of earth.