and said good-morning to his mother, she did not reply. He
turned his head to look at her. Oh, frightful sight! she hung to the
trellis wilted and dead; her green dress was brown and torn, but her
hard and wrinkled hand still grasped poor Cucu's cap.

After the sun had been up some hours, a lady came into the garden and
approached the home of the Cucurbita family.

"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, "what a lovely basket I shall make of you!"
and, placing a hand on each of Cucu's cheeks, she gave him a slight
twist,--his mother's fingers let go; he was free. The lady put him in
her basket, and now he was really setting off on his travels.

This was, in fact, only the beginning of his career. The lady with a
sharp knife lifted his cap from his head; then she painted him all over
a pale green. After the paint was dry, she bored three holes in his
sides. My! how it hurt! but it was soon over, and she had fastened three
slender chains through them, and hung the little Prince up in a sunny
window. "What next?" he wondered. If he had got to hang here all his
life, it wouldn't be much better than the old trellis. But that wasn't
the end, for his mistress filled him with nice black earth, and planted
delicate little ferns and runaway-robins which climbed over and twined
lovingly round his face. They patted his cheeks with their soft little
hands, and whispered pretty stories of the woods they had come from.

"Dear Cucu," said they, "how much we love you, and how kind you are to
hold us all so carefully!" When they said this, he felt so proud and
happy that he could not contain himself any longer, and sang at the top
of his voice; but the people in the house did not hear him, for mortal
ears are not adapted to such music. Only the Cat-bird flying past
understood and stopped to congratulate him.

"Plenty to do, and plenty to love," she sang; "that is the way to be
happy. I found it out last spring when it took me from morning till
night to find food for my four hungry babies. Good-bye! I am going south
with them to-day. I haven't a bit of time to lose," and away she flew.

[Illustration: CUCURBITA IN THE WINDOW.]

And the ferns and the runaway-robins clapped their hands and sang, "Yes,
that is the secret. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

MRS. PRIMKINS' SURPRISE.

BY OLIVE THORNE.

Our older readers will remember Nimpo, whose "Troubles" interested
them in ST. NICHOLAS'S first year. To our newer friends it is only
nec