The next Sunday they talked over the week.

“I tried to be thankful and to say ‘thank you,’ when I ought,” said Margie, “’cause mamma says so much to me about that.  It was hard to remember always, but I tried.”

“I tried not to be cross with Rex,” said Ruth.  “He gets my things and I don’t want him to.  Sometimes I kept from being cross and sometimes I didn’t.  Once I slapped him, but I was sorry right away, and kissed him.  Then he didn’t cry.”

“To be sorry the minute we do wrong is one way to grow better,” said Miss Lee.  “Don’t be discouraged.”

“Mamma said yesterday when she took Jack in the carriage and left me,” said Grace, “that if I would make Nettie contented and happy, it would be better than anything I could do for her.  So I played tea party with her, and was happy after a little minute, and mamma said ‘Thank you!’ when she came back.  Then I was gladder still.”

“I seemed to have a chance to be sorry for people,” said Fanny.  “Mrs. Bailey, next door, had lots of trouble, and I went in and said softly, ‘I’m so sorry.  Mrs. Bailey!’ and she said, ‘That helps a great deal.’”

After all this talk, and more words from Miss Lee, the girls made up their minds to keep on trying to please by being right, and being bright, and they found, as others may, that there is no surer way to give help and to do right.

SCHOOLTIME ANYTIME.

When you have a hard lesson what do you do with it?  Fret and complain over it?  Look for someone to help you with it?  Or do you brace up and tackle it bravely, bringing all your best effort to it.

When the School Yard was White

Ellen D. Masters

Snow did not cover the school yard at Hamlet so often as not to cause a great deal of excitement among the boys and girls, especially a deep snow—­deep enough for making snowballs and forts and snowmen.

So the day after the big snow that fell there one night, Mr. Newman, who had charge of the third grade boys of the Hamlet School, found it a hard day to keep order in his room; and a good many of the boys got low marks for the first time that term.

How they did hate to leave the white school yard when the bell would put an end to the short recesses!

[Illustration:  How they did hate to leave the white school yard.]

“I think it’s a pity we have to be shut up in the schoolhouse all the time and not get any good of it—­when it doesn’t snow here like this more than once till you’re grownup,” Mr. Newman heard one little fellow complain.

Their teacher had liked to play in the snow as well as any of them when he was a boy, and he wished that he had not been obliged to ring the school bell and spoil their fun so soon.

When it was time to dismiss school that day, Mr. Newman looked very solemn and said:  “I think everyone of you boys deserves to be kept an hour more.”