book?"
asked Mrs. Ripley, a pleasant looking lady of apparently
thirty-five.

"Yes'm, but not any I want. Oh, it seems to me that I saw a book
up-stairs in the garret with something about compositions in
it," and, shaking back her floating curls, the little girl
bounded from the room. She ran up the garret stairs, and then
began to look for the book. At last she found it, and eagerly
opened it, and, as she opened it, a paper fluttered to the
floor.

She picked it up, and saw the name "Amy Willard" on it. "Why,"
she thought, "it's something of Aunt Amy's," and she read it. It
was a composition.

"Joan of Arc," cried Dell, "splendid subject, and splendid
composition. I wish I could write one as nice."

"Why not take this one?" asked the tempter. Then there was a
very long struggle in Dell's heart, but the tempter conquered,
and Dell carried the composition down to her own room to copy
it. When she had finished it, she read it over, trying to think
that it sounded just like any of her own, and that no one would
ever know it.

"It sounds just like mine," she said, trying to get rid of that
uneasy feeling. "I guess I'll just change this sentence and that
one."

"Have you written your composition, dear?" asked Mrs. Ripley,
pleasantly, as Dell came slowly down-stairs, and out on the
piazza.

"Yes'm," answered Dell, very low.

"You look tired, dear."

"I am."

"What shall I do if I am found out?" thought Dell.

When she went to bed that night she was very unhappy. Her
conscience troubled her very much. She wished she had never
found the composition, and almost made up her mind to confess,
but, alas, only almost.

She turned and tossed till nearly ten o'clock, and then fell
asleep, and dreamed that, just as she was reading the
composition before the school, her Aunt Amy appeared, and
claimed it as her own, thus showing her niece's wickedness. She
awoke with a scream that brought her mother to her bedside.
Dell's first thought was to tell her mother all, and, without
waiting a moment, she confessed her sin.

After that, Dell's compositions were her own.

ESMERALDA MURIEL LE GRAND.

* * * * *

POLLY'S NECKLACE.

"Oh, mamma," exclaimed little Polly More. "To-morrow is my
birthday, and what