194 DOLLY IN THE LOOKING-GLASS. AN American once said of Mr. Peabody's statue, that he was puzzled to decide whether it was more like Mr. Peabody or Mr. Peabody more like it. Some such joke, I fancy, the little girl in our picture must be making. "Which do you think is prettiest, Dolly,— you or Dolly in the glass?" By-the-bye, the, little puss looks as if she had no doubt about her own prettiness, whether in the glass or out of it. I cannot say as much for Dolly; from the reflection I should say that she is looking very cross at finding herself so ugly. A good many human beings, you might fancy, would look cross for the same reason, when they stood before a looking-glass, but they don't. It shows them as they appear to their neighbours' eyes, but they see their doubles with their own. If we had a lookingglass that could reflect our moral selves, the result would be the same. No power the gift can "gie us, to see oursel's as ithers see us." I will finish off with a funny true story. I know a lady who really has some reason to be proud of her face and figure; if any reasonable being could be proud of things which are no merits. When in a shop one day she saw herself reflected in the plate-glass with which the walls were lined, she did not for the moment recognize the reflection, but exclaimed, with most amusing naiveté, "What I haven't a remarkably good-looking girl! seen such another for many a day!" One day, absorbed in meditation, He roamed into a railway station, And in a corner of a train Sat down, with inattentive brain. They rang the bell, the whistle blew, And when three hours were past and gone, When he got home his parents had And while Jim's parents paid the fare, The Absent boy went past a shop In my machine?" and, as you guess, And just that very day had been For fear he should, in absentness, Would it be best that he should wear The chief objection to this plan MATTHEW BROWNE. THE THE LONELY GIRL. (Continued from page 191.) 'HE nearest church was four miles off, and Jane's grandfather and grandmother hardly ever went there, and when they did go they never took her. They were ashamed of her, poor little girl, because her father had been a bad man. Her mother, however, had taught her to read a little before she died, and Jane had her mother's old New Testament. It was very old and yellow, and rather dog's-eared, but it had a sweet scent, because there were ever so many faded rose-leaves between the pages. I met little Jane sometimes when I was wandering about in the wood, and had a talk with her. The bits in the Bible, she told me, that she liked best were those "about folks being so happy in heaven, and how Jesus was so kind to little boys and girls, and to wicked people when they were sorry." She had a little book of ballads, too, and could almost say the "Babes in the Wood" off by heart. They was better off nor me," she saidshe hadn't learnt grammar, you know—“'cos I've got ne'er a brother to go about wi' me." So poor little Lonely Jane tried to make friends with the trees and the flowers, and the birds, and the bees. She loved all birds, except the geese that bit her heels, and the kestrels, because she had seen them kill linnets. She was very vexed, though, that the robin-redbreasts, that buried the poor little children with leaves, should be so quarrelsome. She wanted me to tell her whether I didn't think they might be only fond of fighting for fun. Pheasants, too, she didn't much like to look at. Her father had been a poacher, and it was "along o' they," she said, "that he got sent across the sea." There was one place in the wood, she told me, she couldn't "abear to go anighthe great pond grandfather said father had knocked the keeper into." I went there one day. It was such a lonely place, with waterhens swimming about, and long hairy-leaved all-heal dipping its red blossoms into the still green water. The all-heal hadn't been able to heal the wound the poor keeper got from the butt-end of the poacher's gun. Poor little Jane used to look very sad when she talked about her father. She tried to say all the good she could of him. "He used to gie me sweeties, and sometimes he was as kind as kind to mother," she told me. Jane wouldn't have hurt a worm. She didn't like to see the woodmen barking the trees in May, because she fancied the trees couldn't "like to have their skins took off." She showed me once a field-mouse's nest. I was going to take one of the funny little fat baby mice out of the soft warm bundle they had made of themselves, all jumbled together higgledy piggledy, heads and tails; but Jane asked me not to, because its mother would miss it. "Grandfather kills 'em," she said, "'cos they spoils the trees, he says; but they seem sich mites o' things to do mischief, doesn't they?" She would never show me a bird's nest until I had promised not to take any of the eggs or the young ones. You would have called it "jolly" to be able to wander about with little Jane. She could have taken you straight to almost any kind of bird's nest you wanted to see. She would have shown you a plump, snug, warm little robin's nest, with five little white red-streaked eggs, peeping out beneath a tuft of primrose leaves from a hole in a mossy little wall; or a great gaping blackbird's nest in the hazel bushes, with the green spotted eggs looking as if they were addled with cold on the uncomfortable clay floor; or funny little Mrs. Jenny Wren giving their dinner to a score of Master Wrens and Miss Wrens, all gaping very rudely; or nearly grown-up Master and Miss Water-hen taking their little brothers and sisters out for a walk, or building them comical little nests among the reeds. You could tell a bantam's egg from an ostrich's, perhaps, but little Jane could tell which were missel-thrush's and which were song-thrush's. One day she showed me what she said was a magpie's nest, almost at the top of a pine-tree. but just then a squirrel came cantering along on three paws, with an armful of dry grass, and up the tree he scampered with it. Jane could not help laughing when I asked her whether the squirrel was going to tuck the little magpies in with his blanket, and then she told me what I didn't know before, that Master Squirrel, for all he looks so brisk, and whisks his tail and cocks his ears so saucily, and scolds the birds, and lets his nutshells tumble on one's hat just as if he had taken aim at the crown to hear the rattle, is a very lazy little chap. Instead of building a house outright for himself, he likes to carry his furniture into an old magpie's nest. The cuckoo, you know, is another idle thing. You've heard it sometimes, but little Jane could have shown it to you, flitting about from tree to tree, with a mob of little birds after it, all chattering at once, just as if they were saying, (Concluded on page 197). Little Sweet is the sound of the brook in flowing; Red and white the fox-gloves stand, And yellow the corn on the farmer's land: The church clock sounds with a gentle shock, And the villagers say, "It is twelve o'clock!" The birds are sailing high in air, What do you say is the wind to-day? The wind is in the sweet south-west, The wind is soft as a mother's breast, And seems to blow for play. 'Tis a summer's day, but the day is cool, The only clouds are white like wool, Wool with a silver fire inside, And oh, how high in the air they ride!| And so do the swallows. One, I see, Is peeping in at a casement there, Where a mother sits with a baby fair, And hushes the baby to her breast,Smile, mother! Baby, rest, Baby, rest on mother's arm! The swallow will do the babe no harm,He only comes to look in at his nest. |