don’t look as if you could ever be naughty.”

Prue stopped laughing, and, putting her arm around her sister’s neck, she said, “Oh, Randy! I never mean to, and ’most always when I’m naughty it’s when I’m trying to help. Don’t you know that time when I dropped the platter and broke it all to smash? Mother put down the towel she was wiping it with to look in the oven to see if the bread was burning. I thought I’d s’prise you and mother, and show you I’d wiped the big platter nice and dry. Just a minute before, mother said it was too big for me to handle, and that just made me want to.”

“I know it,” said Randy, “I know you mean to be good, and I do believe you can’t help doing funny things, you best little sister in all the world,” and she kissed Prue, laughing at her at the same time. “Now, do be good to-day, and, if you don’t do a naughty thing before dinner, I’ll do something splendid. I’ll have to help mother this morning, and do a lot of things. Then, of course, I’ll wipe the dinner dishes, and after that you and I will go down to that shady place by the brook, and I’ll tell you some of the stories I read in that book I found.”

“Oh, will you?” said Prue, “can you ’member them?”

“Yes, some of them; I can’t remember all of them yet,” said Randy.

“Why don’t you take the book and read them?” said Prue.

“Because,” said Randy, “father’s got to look it over and see if it’s a good book first, mother says.”

“Why isn’t he ’fraid to read it, if p’r’aps, it isn’t good?” said the child, with such a funny expression on her face that Randy, who really did not know how to answer such a question, laughed, and said she thought it must be time to dress.

Up sprang little Prue, and out upon the floor. “You dress me first,” said she. So Randy put on the little one’s shoes and stockings, then, piece by piece, her other little garments, all the time silently admiring the round, dimpled arms, the roguish eyes, and tangle of short curls, and the sweet little mouth, honestly believing that no girl in all the world had so dear a little sister. Just as Randy turned to button the little dress, Prue uttered a joyous cry, and darted over to the window.

“Oh, come quick, quick!” she called. “See the butterfly almost coming in our window.” And sure enough, when Randy reached the window, there he was, a gorgeous fellow, with bright, golden wings, swinging up and down over a fresh rose-colored morning-glory.

“Oh!” cried Prue, “isn’t it the handsomest butterfly you ever saw?”

“Yes, and look at the dewdrops on the pink morning-glory,” said imaginative Randy; “I wonder if the necklace that the fairy queen wore looked as bright as that? In the picture in the book it looks just like strings and strings of beads.”

“I liked the beads and her dress, with a long train to it; but in the picture she didn’t have a nice face ’t all,” said Prue, the young critic.

“Oh, but she was bea-utiful,” said Randy. “She must have been, the story said so,” but just here Randy’s raptures over the heroine of the fairy tale were cut short by a loud call of “Randy! Randy! Prue! it’s time to come downstairs!”

So Randy hurried on her own clothing, and Prue amused herself while waiting by counting the buttons on Randy’s best gingham dress as it hung on the first hook in the closet, and this is the way she half said and half sung it:—

“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer,—Randy, what’s a lawyer? Your last button is a lawyer.”

“I don’t know,” said Randy; “ask father;” but when they had reached the lowest stair and entered the kitchen Prue had forgotten her question and asked another.

“Father,” she cried, “have you read the book yet? Are you going to let Randy read it? the fairy book, I mean?”

“Two questions in one,” said Mr. Weston, laughing. “Why, yes, I guess I’ll have to let her read it, if she wants to,” said he.

“Going to let Randy read those outlandish tales?” said Mrs. Weston coming out of the closet with a pie in her hand, which she placed upon the table. “Why there wasn’t a word of truth in them.”

“I know it,” said her husband, smiling, “but I didn’t see anything wrong about them, and the yarns that are in the book are so big that no sensible girl, like our Randy, would s’pose she was expected to believe them a minute. I looked it over last night after I’d thought over that piece of medder land of Jason Meade’s that he wants to swap for my little pasture, and cal-lated ’bout what the bargain was worth. I just took down that fairy book from behind the clock, and I thought I’d just look it over to see if it was all right for Randy and Prue, and, if you’d believe me, ’fore I knew it, I was ’most as interested as the children was. As you say, there ain’t any sense in it, but it reads kinder fine, I must say.”

Mrs. Weston laughed, and said that she was willing enough to let them have it if the book was all right.

“Right enough,” rejoined her husband, “only kind of foolish,” and smiling at the children’s eager faces he said kindly, “Read it if you like, only don’t let it make you forget to help mother, Randy.”

Randy and Prue started for the Brook

“Randy don’t often forget that,” said Mrs. Weston, at which unwonted bit of praise, Randy flushed with delight.

Mrs. Weston was a hard-working woman who loved her husband and children dearly, but so busy was she, that she forgot to say the encouraging word, or give the bit of praise, justly won, which seems a reward to the husband for his care and toil, and to the child for “being good.”

When the hot forenoon’s work was done, and the dinner dishes put away, Randy and Prue started for the brook, Randy carrying the wonderful book very carefully, and little Prue skipping along beside her. Across the fields, behind the barn, into a bit of woodland went the children, and there they found the brook, calm and placid in one place, rippling and chattering in another. “Hark! hear it talk,” said Randy, but practical little Prue said, “It only says ‘wobble, wobble, wobble,’ as it goes over the stones, and I don’t call that talking.”

“Well, I do,” said Randy, “and I always wonder what it says.”

“How’ll you find out?” said Prue.

“Oh, Prue!” said Randy, “what makes you ask questions that nobody could answer?”

“But somebody could,” said the child; “if it really says anything, somebody, somewhere, would know what it means, now wouldn’t they, Randy?”

“I do believe there is some one who could understand it.” Randy spoke so earnestly that Prue stopped throwing pebbles at the water-spiders and throwing her arms around Randy, she said, “Oh, Randy! don’t look that way. When your eyes get big, and you just think and think, it makes me lonesome. Do begin to read the fairy stories.”

So Randy roused herself from her dream about the brook, and sat down, with Prue close beside her, on a rough plank which spanned the tiny stream. There, with the book upon her lap, and one arm around her little sister, she read the tales of wonder and enchantment, while the sunlight,