day to get your dinner. I'll always be glad to
see you."

"Cheerup chee-chee, cheerup chee-chee! thank you, thank you," cried the
Robins.

"Ter-ra-lee, ter-ra-lee, ter-ra-lee! thank you, thank you!" twittered
Snow Bunting.

"Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee,
chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee! how kind you are!" sang the Chickadees.

And Thistle Goldfinch? Yes, he remembered his summer song, for he sang
as they flew away:

"Swee-e-et--sweet-sweet-sweet-a-twitter-witter-witter-witter--wee-twea!"

* * * * *

NOTES.--1: The Robin's song is from "Bird Talks,"
by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

2: The fact upon which this story is based--that
is of the other birds adopting and warming the
solitary Thistle Goldfinch--was observed near
Northampton, Mass., where robins and other
migratory birds sometimes spend the winter in the
thick pine woods.

FOOTNOTE:

[I] From "In the Child's World," by Emilie Poulssen, Milton Bradley Co.,
Publishers. Used by permission.

XIV

THE LITTLE SISTER'S VACATION[J]

WINIFRED M. KIRKLAND

IT WAS to be a glorious Christmas at Doctor Brower's. All "the
children"--little Peggy and her mother always spoke of the grown-up ones
as "the children"--were coming home. Mabel was coming from Ohio with her
big husband and her two babies, Minna and little Robin, the year-old
grandson whom the home family had never seen; Hazen was coming all the
way from the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and Arna was coming home from
her teaching in New York.

It was a trial to Peggy that vacation did not begin until the very day
before Christmas, and then continued only one niggardly week. After
school hours she had helped her mother in the Christmas preparations
every day until she crept into bed at night with aching arms and tired
feet, to lie there tossing about, whether from weariness or glad
excitement she did not know.

"Not so hard, daughter," the doctor said to her once.

"Oh, papa," protested her mother, "when we're so busy, and Peggy is so
handy!"

"Not so hard," he repeated, with his eyes on fifteen-year-old Peggy's
delicate face, as, wearing her braids pinned up on her head and a
pinafore down to her toes, she stoned raisins and blanched almonds,
rolled bread crumbs and beat eggs, dusted and polished and made ready
for the children.

Finally, after a day of flying abo