he longed to find the Child, that she too might love and
worship Him. She asked every one she met, and some people thought her
crazy, but others gave her kind answers. Have you perhaps guessed that the
young Child whom the Three Kings sought was our Lord himself?

People told Babouscka how He was born in a manger, and many other things
which you children have learned long ago. These answers puzzled the old
dame mightily. She had but one idea in her ignorant head. The Three Kings
had gone to seek a Baby. She would, if not too late, seek Him too.

She forgot, I am sure, how many long years had gone by. She looked in vain
for the Christ-child in His manger-cradle. She spent all her little
savings in toys and candy so as to make friends with little children, that
they might not run away when she came hobbling into their nurseries.

Now you know for whom she is sadly seeking when she pushes back the
bed-curtains and bends down over each baby's pillow. Sometimes, when the
old grandmother sits nodding by the fire, and the bigger children sleep
in their beds, old Babouscka comes hobbling into the room, and whispers
softly, "Is the young Child here?"

Ah, no; she has come too late, too late. But the little children know her
and love her. Two thousand years ago she lost the chance of finding Him.
Crooked, wrinkled, old, sick and sorry, she yet lives on, looking into
each baby's face--always disappointed, always seeking. Will she find Him
at last?

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

SELMA LAGERLOeF

Far away, in a desert in the East, there grew, many years ago, a palm that
was very, very old, and very, very tall. No one passing through the desert
could help stopping to look at it, for it was much higher than other
palms, and people said of it that it would surely grow to be higher than
the Obelisks and Pyramids.

This great palm, standing in its loneliness, and looking over the desert,
one day saw something which caused its huge crown of leaves to wave to and
fro with surprise on its slender stem. On the outskirts of the desert two
lonely persons were wandering. They were still so far away that even a
camel would have looked no larger than an ant at that distance, but they
were assuredly human beings, two who were strangers to the desert--for the
palm knew the people of the desert--a man and a woman, who had neither
guide, nor beasts of burden, nor tent, nor water-bag.

"Verily," said the palm to itself, "these two have come hi