So the next day, when the wind came whistling along, the Violet asked him if he would kindly take care of the leaf, and send him to her when the mother-tree let him go.  The wind was rough and careless, and said he really didn’t know.  He couldn’t be sure how he’d feel then.  They would have to wait and see.

The two little friends were rather unhappy about this, but they waited quietly.  By and by the weather grew cold.  The air was so chill that the Maple-leaf shivered in the night, and in the morning, when the sun rose, and he could see himself, he found he was all red, just as your hands and cheeks are on a frosty morning.  When the mother-tree saw him, she told him he would soon leave her now, and she bade him good-by.  He was sorry to go, but then he thought of his dear Violet, and was happy again.

By and by a gust of cold wind came blowing by, and twisted the little leaf about, and fluttered him so that he could not hold to the tree any longer.  So at last he blew off, and the wind took him up and danced with him and played with him until he was very tired and dizzy.  But at last, for he was a kind wind after all, he blew the leaf back, straight to the side of the Violet.  How close they cuddled to each other, and how happy they were!  You would have been very glad if you had seen them together.

In the morning, when the sun rose yellow and bright, Bessie came into the woods with a basket and a trowel.  It was nearly winter, and she knew that soon the snow would fall and cover all the pretty growing things.  So she dug up, very carefully, roots of plumy fern and partridge berries with their leaves, and wintergreen and boxberry plants, to grow in her window-garden in the winter.  She took the Violet too, bringing away so much of the earth around her roots that the little thing scarcely felt that she had been moved.  As Bessie put her plants in the basket, she saw the little Maple-leaf resting close by the violet, but he looked so pretty, lying there, that she did not move him.

In the sunny window of the little brown house the Violet grew still more fresh and green.  But each day, as the plants were watered, the Maple-leaf curled up a little more at the edges, and sank down farther into the earth, until soon he was almost out of sight, and by and by crumbled quite away.  Still he was close beside his Violet, and all the strength he had he gave to her roots.

She always loved him just the same, though she could not see him any longer, and by and by, when she had lived her life, and her leaves withered away, each one, as it fell from the stem, sank into the earth where the Maple-leaf lay.

MRS. CHINCHILLA.

The tale of A cat.

“See what joyous faces, what shining eyes, and what glad jubilee welcome the story-teller, and what a blooming circle of glad children press around him!”—­Froebel.