“It hasn’t been nearly so good a year with me as I hoped it would be,” sighed Lulu.

“Yet an improvement upon the one before it, I think,” remarked her father in a tone of encouragement.  “You have not, so far as I know, indulged, even once, in a fit of violent anger—­and knowing my little girl as most truthful and very open with me—­I certainly believe that if she had been in a passion she would have come to me with an honest confession of her fault.”

“I’m sure Lu would,” said Max; “and I do think she has improved very much.”

“No; I haven’t been in a passion, papa, and I hope if I had, I wouldn’t have been deceitful enough to try to hide it from you.  But oh I’ve been very, very naughty two or three times in other ways, you know; and you were so good to forgive me and keep on loving me in spite of it all.”

“Dear child!” was all he said in reply, accompanying the words with a tender caress.

“I, too, have come a good deal short of my resolves,” observed Max, with a regretful sigh.  “Yet I suppose we have both done better than we should if we hadn’t made good resolutions.”

“No doubt of it,” said his father.  “I feel it to be so in my case, though I, too, have fallen far short of the standard I set myself.  But shall we not try again, my children?”

“Oh yes, sir, yes!”

“And try, not only to make the new year better—­if we are spared to see it—­but also the three remaining days of the old?”

“Yes,” sighed Lulu, “perhaps I may get into a dreadful passion yet before the year is out.”

“I hope not, daughter,” her father said; “but watch and pray, for only so can you be safe.  There is One who is able to keep you from falling.  Cling close to Him like the limpet to the rock.”

“Oh I will!” she replied in an earnest tone.  “But papa what is a limpet?  I don’t remember ever having heard of it before.”

“It is a shell-fish of which there are numerous species exhibiting great variety of form and color.  The common limpet is most abundant on the rocky coasts of Britain.  They live on the rocks between low and high tide marks.

“They move about when the water covers them, but when the tide is out, remain firmly fixed to one spot; so firmly that unless surprised by a sudden seizure, it is almost impossible to drag or tear them from the rock without breaking the shell.”

“How can they hold so tight?” asked Max.

“The animal has a round or oval muscular foot by which it clings, and its ability to do so is increased by a viscous or sticky secretion.”

“Please tell some more about them, papa,” requested Lulu, looking greatly interested.  “Have they mouths? and do you know what they eat?”

“Yes, they have mouths and they live on seaweed, eating it by means of a long ribbon-like tongue covered with rows of hard teeth; the common limpet—­which, as I have told you, lives on the British coast—­has no fewer than one hundred and sixty rows, twelve teeth in a row.  How many does that make, Max?”