e brown, wrinkled one, and the little
girl is shouting in her ear that she has brought some dinner from
mamma. It makes a smile shine in the old half-blind eyes. It is always
the happiest part of the day to her when the dear little lady comes
with her dinner. And it made Louise happy too, for nothing repays us
so well as what we do unselfishly for others.

These summer days are full of delight for the children. It is not all
play for them, to be sure; but then, work is often even more charming
than play, as I think some little girls know when they have been
helping their mothers,--running of errands, dusting the furniture,
and sewing little squares of patchwork that the baby may have a
cradle-quilt made entirely by her little sister.

Louise can knit, and, indeed, every child and woman in that country
knits. You would almost laugh to see how gravely the little girl takes
out her stocking, for she has really begun her first stocking, and
sits on the piazza-steps for an hour every morning at work. Then the
little garden, which she calls her own, must be weeded. The gardener
would gladly do it, but Louise has a hoe of her own, which her father
bought in the spring, and, bringing it to his little daughter, said:
"Let me see how well my little girl can take care of her own garden."
And the child has tried very hard; sometimes, it is true, she would
let the weeds grow pretty high before they were pulled up, but, on the
whole, the garden promises well, and there are buds on her moss-rose
bush. It is good to take care of a garden, for, besides the pleasure
the flowers can bring us, we learn how watchful we must be to root out
the weeds, and how much trimming and care the plants need; so we learn
how to watch over our own hearts.

She has books, too, and studies a little each day,--studies at home
with her mother, for there is no school near enough for her to go to
it, and while she and Fritz are so young, their mother teaches them,
while Christian, who is already more than twelve years old, has gone
to the school upon that beautiful hill which can be seen from Louise's
chamber window,--the school where a hundred boys and girls are
studying music. For, ever since he was a baby, Christian has loved
music; he has sung the very sweetest little songs to Louise, while she
was yet so young as to lie in her cradle, and he has whistled until
the birds among the bushes would answer him again, and now, when he
comes home from school to