dipper for measuring. To-day she put in some round, white cheeses and golden balls of butter. Off started the cart along the narrow street with Love running gaily along one side and Jan clattering along in his wooden shoes on the other side. The dogs knew where to stop almost as well as Jan did for they had made the trip so many times. The cheese and butter were soon gone, and every one had a pleasant smile for the little English lass. At one cottage, a Dutch housewife brought out a strange, earth-colored bulb that she put in Love’s hands. Then, smiling down into the little girl’s wondering face, she said:

“It is a rare one indeed. I give it to you that you may plant it and tend it all winter. When the spring comes, you will have a finer one than any child in all Amsterdam.”

Love thanked the woman but she puzzled over the hard, dry bulb as she and Jan walked home beside the empty milk cart. “It looks like nothing but an onion. What good is it, Jan?”

Jan’s eyes twinkled. “I know, but I won’t tell,” he said. “I want you to be surprised next spring. Come, Love, we will plant it in the corner of the garden that the sun shines on first in the spring. Then we will wait.”

As Jan dug a hole and Love planted the bulb, his words repeated themselves in the little girl’s lonely heart. She remembered, too, what her dear father had said last to her, “Wait patiently until I come, Love.” Would her patience bring the hard bulb to life or her father back, Love wondered sorrowfully.

The days passed, with blue skies and the bright sun shining down upon the canal, and then grew shorter. The storks flew south, and Love was very happy. Her days with Jan were busy, merry ones. She, too, had wooden shoes now; and Jan’s mother had made her a warm red skirt and a velvet girdle and a little, green, quilted coat. Love looked like a real little Dutch girl as she skated to school, with her knitting in her school bag to busy her fingers with when it was recess time.

There was never any place in England, Love thought, so merry and gay as the frozen canal in front of her new home in Holland. Everybody was on skates; the market women with wooden yokes over their shoulders, from which hung baskets of vegetables; and even a mother skating and holding her baby in a snug nest made of a shawl on her back. The old doctor skated, with his pill bag on one arm, to see a sick patient at the other end of the town; and long rows of happy children glided by, holding each other’s coats and twisting and twining about like a gay ribbon.

“Are you not glad, Love, that you came here to Holland to be my sister?” Jan asked as, holding her hand in his, he skated with Love to school.

“I am glad, Jan,” Love laughed back. “I feel as if it were a story book that I am living in, and you and your dear mother and our house and the canal were the pictures in it. But, oh, Jan, I wish very much that I could see my father—so tall and brave and strong!” Then she stopped. “We must be hastening, Jan,” she said, “or we shall be late for school.” But to herself, Love was saying, “Be patient.”

Spring came early that year in Amsterdam. The ice melted and the canals were once more blue ribbons of water. The sails of the windmills whirred, and the housewives scrubbed their sidewalks until the stones were clean enough to eat from. The storks built again in the red chimneys and, everywhere, the tulips burst into bloom. Love had never seen such beautiful flowers in all her life. There was no garden in all Amsterdam so small or so poor as not to have a bed of bright red and yellow tulips.

With the first sunshine, Love went out to the garden where she and Jan had planted the ugly, hard bulb. How wonderful; her patience had been rewarded! There were two tall, straight green leaves and between them, like a wonderful cup upon its green stem, a great, beautiful tulip. It was larger than any of the others. It was not red or yellow like the others, but pink, like a rose, or a sunrise cloud, or a baby’s cheek.

“Come, Jan; come, mother,” cried Love, and then the three stood about the pink tulip in admiration.

“It is the most beautiful tulip in all Amsterdam,” said Jan.

“It is worth money,” said his mother. “Some one would pay a good price for the bulb.”

Love remembered what Jan’s mother had said. As the days passed and the pink tulip opened wider and showed a deeper tint each day, a plan began to form in the little girl’s mind. She knew that there was not very much money in Jan’s home to which she had been so kindly welcomed. She knew, too, that nothing was so dear to the people of Holland as their tulips. Strange tales were told; how they sold houses, cattle, land, everything to buy tulip bulbs.

JAN AND HIS DOG CART

One Saturday when Jan was away doing an errand for his mother, Love dug up her precious pink tulip and planted it carefully in a large flower pot. With the pot hugged close to her heart, she went swiftly away from the house, down the long steps, and as far as the road that led along the coast of the sea below the dike. Here, where great merchant ships from all over the world anchored almost every day, Love felt sure that some one would see her tulip and want to buy it.

There was such a crowd,—folk of many nations busy unloading cargoes,—that at first no one saw the little girl with the flower in her arms. Up and down the shore she walked, a little frightened but brave. She held the flower high, and called in her sweet voice, “A rare pink tulip. Who will buy my pink tulip?”

Intent on holding the flower carefully, she came suddenly in front of a man who had been walking in lonely fashion up and down the shore. She heard him call her name eagerly.

“Love! Love! Oh, my little Love!”

Looking up, Love almost dropped the tulip in her joy. Then she set it down and rushed into his arms.

“Father, dear father! Oh, where have you been so long?” she cried.

It was a story told between laughter and tears. Goodman Bradford, only a short time since released from prison, had come straight to Amsterdam, but he had been able to find no trace of Love. Mistress Brewster had gone on with the Pilgrims to America, and there was no one to tell Goodman Bradford where his little daughter was. Now, he could make a home for her and reward Jan’s mother.

“I was patient,” Love said, “as you bade me be, and see,” she cried as, hand in hand, they reached the quaint little cottage where Jan and his mother stood at the door to greet them, “in good time they both came to me—the pink tulip, and my father.”

Big Hawk’s Decoration

“See to it, Preserve, that you win a colored ribbon from the schoolmaster to-day,” Mistress Edwards said as she turned from her task of polishing the pewter platter to look at the boy who stood in the doorway of the log cabin.

“THE LOG CABIN WAS BUT A ROUGH HOME”

“This is the day, I hear, on which the good-conduct ribbons are given out for the month, brightly dyed ones for the boys and girls whose lessons have been well learned, and black for the dunces. There is no chance of your coming home to me to-night without a ribbon of merit, is there?” The Colonial mother crossed the room and put her hands on her lad’s shoulder, looking anxiously into his honest brown eyes.

“No, mother,” Preserve