“It’s ’most as good as just running with Rover; and getting the cow helps granny, you know.  Is that the kind of work you wanted me to do?”

“Yes, dear.  I am sure you have made a very good beginning.  You can see if there is anything else for you to do.  If one learns to keep his eyes open, he will have a chance to help a good many people.”

“I’m going to keep my eyes open, Aunt Abbie.”

—­Written for Dew Drops by Rosalie Sill.

THE MAKING OF A BOOK.

     Miss Fanny has a little niece who lives so far away
     That she has never seen her, though she’s six months old to-day. 
     To be an aunt, Miss Fanny said there was so much to learn
     Of proper auntly methods she knew not where to turn. 
     She’d never been an aunt before, and knew not how to be,
     And so she asked if I should mind her practicing on me? 
     She bought a long thick blank book bound in leather, gold and brown. 
     And first we did the lovely things, and then she wrote them down.

     There’s chapter one, called “Going to bed, and how to make it fun”;
     And chapter two “On dressing dolls, and how it should be done”;
     And chapter three (the one by me), called “Things about the dark”;
     And chapter four we did last week, “On going to the park.” 
     We’re working now on “Cookies” (and we find they’re apt to burn),
     And after that is written down, there’s not much more to learn. 
     Now if you ever meet an aunt who’s not exactly right. 
     Just borrow dear Miss Fanny’s book, and leave it out in sight!

—­Selected.

DONALD’S “FORGETTERY.”

“Oh, I forgot!” It was Donald excusing himself for leaving the gate of the chicken yard open, and now the pansy bed was all scratched up.  Bessie was in tears, and Don was almost crying.

“What shall I do with a little boy who is always forgetting?” mamma asked very gently.  She had tried so many different ways to have Donald learn to remember.

“Mamma, let’s have a forgetter, for Don, or any of us.  Just a big closet—­that one upstairs with the window will do.  Let’s put all our forgets in there.  Anything that’s spoiled because we forget it, goes in there, for us to mend or to think of some way to make good.  If we forget, we have to go there for the very next hour—­unless it’s schooltime—­no matter how we want to do something else.”

“Shall we try that, Donald?” asked mamma.  She knew that Uncle Rod was coming within that hour to take the children to ride.

Donald knew it, too, but his voice did not falter, “Yes, mamma, let’s begin now.  I do want to stop forgetting.”

So up to the big closet they went, mamma, and Donald, each carrying some of the wilted pansy plants.  There was a low stool to sit on, and there Donald spent the next hour thinking as he had never thought before.  He heard Uncle Rod come and go away again.