ous life! I have seen the children run out of school
to pick such sweet wild strawberries, all the recess-time, up in the
fields of Maine; and how happy they were with their little stained
fingers as they came back at the call of the bell!

In the black bog-mud grew the Alpen roses, and her mother said, "Do
not go there, my little daughter, it is too muddy for you." But at
night, when her brother came home from the chamois hunt, he took off
his tall, pointed hat, and showed his little sister the long spray of
roses twisted round it, which he had brought for her. He could go in
the mud with his thick boots, you know, and never mind it.

Here they live alone upon the mountain; there are no near neighbors.
At evening they can see the blue smoke curling from the chimney of one
house that stands behind that sunny green slope, a hundred yards from
their door, and they can always look down upon the many houses of the
town below, where the mother lived when she was young.

Many times has Jeannette wondered how the people lived down there,--so
many together; and where their cows could feed, and whether there were
any little girls like herself, and if they picked berries, and had
such a dear old black nanny-goat as hers, that gave milk for her
supper, and now had two little black kids, its babies. She didn't know
about those little children in Maine, and that they have little
kids and goats, as well as sweet red berries, to make the days pass
happily.

She wanted to go down and see, some day, and her father promised that,
when she was a great girl, she should go down with him on market-days,
to sell the goats'-milk cheeses and the sweet butter that her mother
made.

When the cows and goats have eaten all the grass near the house, her
father drives them before him up farther among the mountains, where
more grass is growing, and there he stays with them many weeks: he
does not even come home at night, but sleeps in a small hut among the
rocks, where, too, he keeps the large clean milk-pails, and the little
one-legged stool upon which he sits at morning and night to milk the
cows and goats.

When the pails are full, the butter is to be made, and the cheese; and
he works while the animals feed. The cows have little bells tied to
their necks, that he may hear and find them should they stray too far.

Many times, when he is away, does his little daughter at home listen,
listen, while she sits before the door, to hear the distan