“I wish I could think of something very, very sweet to do for her, something that would make her happy all the time,” she said.  “It must be so lonely and stupid for her to stay in the same room all the time, never seeing any other children.”

“Keep thinking about it and the right thought will come to you,” mamma told her, and mamma’s advice turned out to be right, as usual.

Two days later, Edith came downstairs, her face shining.

“I know, mamma.  I know what will make Lucile happy every day in the whole six weeks she must stay in the house.  The kittens!  I will give her my kittens.  It has been nearly two weeks since she has seen them, and they have grown so much and their fur has fluffed out so beautifully she will hardly know them.”

And the kittens were lovely.  Who wouldn’t want a present like that?  Edith loved them with all her heart, but she didn’t for one minute want to keep them for herself when she knew they would make Lucile happy.  She put them carefully in a basket, covering them well to keep out the cold.  A nice Indian hanging-basket that she had used for a swing for the pets was packed, too, and then papa took the “happy thought,” as mamma called it, to Lucile’s home.

“Remember, it must be a surprise for her,” his small daughter reminded him as he left the house.  “I want her to awaken from a nap and find the kittens swinging in the basket just where she can see them.”

And that is the way Lucile saw them.  If they ever had looked sweet to Edith’s eyes, they looked a thousand times more so to Lucile’s poor, tired ones.

“Oh-h-h!” she exclaimed, with a long-drawn, happy sigh.  “You darling darlings!  Have you come to stay, or are you only visitors?”

The basket with its dainty load hung from a picture-hook near by, and the new-comers looked quite contented to stay.  They jumped into the bed and did all they knew to cure the little girl.  And they really helped.—­Written for Dew Drops by Elizabeth Roberts Burton.

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Knowledge Box

When Lapland Babies Go to Church.

When Sunday morning comes, the Lapland father harnesses his reindeer to the sleigh.  Father and mother wrap themselves in fur coats and put a fur coat on the baby, and away they go over the snow to church, it may be ten or even fifteen miles, for the reindeer can go a good deal faster than a horse.

But the old Lapland custom of caring for the babies while the grown people are in church, you never would guess.  For as soon as the reindeer is made secure, the father Lapp shovels out a snug little bed in the snow, and when it is ready the mother Lapp wraps the baby snug and warm in skins and lays it down there.  Then the father Lapp piles the snow around and over the baby, when they go into the church and leave the baby in the snow.  So common is this that sometimes there are twenty or thirty babies, down to the little wee-est ones, buried in snow around the church.