e was glad he hadn't gi'n up b'leevin' 't would come. For
you 'member, all the time when Billy 'most knowed it wasn't, Jack 'most
knowed 'twas.

The Plant that Lost its Berry

IV

It was a sad day in Greenhills when we knew that Susan Holcomb's little
Jerusha was dead. We all loved the child, and she was her mother's
dearest treasure. Susan was a widow, and this was her only child. A
pretty little creature she was, with yellow curls and dark-blue eyes,
rosy and plump and sturdy. But a sudden, sharp attack of croup seized
the child, and in a few hours she fell asleep. I need not tell you of
the mother's grief. She could not be comforted because her child was
not. One day a little neighbor, a boy with great faith--not wholly
misplaced--in the helpfulness of Story-tell Lib's little parables,
succeeded, with a child's art, in bringing the sad mother to the group
of listeners. And it was that day that Lib told this new story.

The Plant that Lost its Berry

Once there was a plant, and it had jest one little berry. And the berry
was real pretty to look at. It was sort o' blue, with a kind o' whitey,
foggy look all over the blue, and it wa'n't round like huckleberries and
cramb'ries, but longish, and a little p'inted to each end. And the stem
it growed on, the little bit of a stem, you know, comin' out o' the
plant's big stem, like a little neck to the berry, was pinky and real
pretty. And this berry didn't have a lot o' teenty little seeds inside
on it, like most berries, but it jest had one pretty white stone in it,
with raised up streaks on it.

The plant set everything by her little berry. She thought there never
was in all the airth sech a beautiful berry as hern,--so pretty shaped
and so whitey blue, with sech a soft skin and pinky neck, and more
partic'lar with that nice, white, striped stone inside of it. She held
it all day and all night tight and fast. When it rained real hard, and
the wind blowed, she kind o' stretched out some of her leaves, and
covered her little berry up, and she done the same when the sun was too
hot. And the berry growed and growed, and was so fat and smooth and
pretty! And the plant was jest wropped up in her little berry, lovin' it
terr'ble hard, and bein' dreadful proud on it, too.

Well, one day, real suddent, when the plant wasn't thinkin' of any storm
comin', a little wind riz up. 'T wa'n't a gale, 't wa'n't half as hard a
blow as the berry'd seen lots o' times and never