learned to know and to love the little worms that eat the
mulberry-leaves, and then spin for themselves a silken shell, and fall
into a long sleep inside of it. She watched her mother spin off the
fine silk and make it into neat skeins, and once she rode on her
mother's back to market to sell it. You could gather mulberry-leaves,
and set up these little silkworm boxes on the windowsill of your
schoolroom. I have seen silk and flax and cotton all growing in a
pleasant schoolroom, to show the scholars of what linen and silk and
cotton are made.

Now those days are all past. She can hardly remember them, she was so
little then; and she has learned to be happy in her new home on the
river, where they came when the fire burned their house, and the
tea-plants and the mulberry-trees were taken by other men.

Sometimes at night, after the day's work is over, the ducks have
come home, and the stars have come out, she sits at the door of the
boat-house, and watches the great bright fireflies over the marshes,
and thinks of the blue lake Syhoo, covered with lilies, where gilded
boats are sailing, and the people seem so happy.

Up in the high-walled garden of the great house on the hill, the
night-moths have spread their broad, soft wings, and are flitting
among the flowers, and the little girl with the small feet lies on her
silken bed, half asleep. She, too, thinks of the lake and the lilies,
but she knows nothing about Pen-se, who lives down upon the river.

See, the sun has gone from them. It must be morning for us now.

THE LITTLE DARK GIRL.

In this part of the world, Manenko would certainly be considered
a very wild little girl. I wonder how you would enjoy her for a
playmate. She has never been to school, although she is more than
seven years old, and doesn't know how to read, or even to tell her
letters; she has never seen a book but once, and she has never learned
to sew or to knit.

If you should try to play at paper dolls with her, she would make very
funny work with the dresses, I assure you. Since she never wore a gown
or bonnet or shoes herself, how should she know how to put them on to
the doll? But, if she had a doll like herself, I am sure she would
be as fond of it as you are of yours; and it would be a very cunning
little dolly, I should think. Perhaps you have one that looks somewhat
like this little girl in the picture.

Now I will tell you of some things which she can do.

She can paddle the