very glad to read to you, or to tell you stories such as
I used to tell Fanny, when she was of your age, if you will come and sit
by me and listen."

"She is only a girl, and you are an old woman," muttered Norman
shovelling the mince meat into his mouth. "I want boys to play with
me."

"You will find plenty of boys to play with when you go to school, where
I hope your papa will soon send you," observed Mrs Leslie, "but you
will find that they do not treat you in the gentle way your sister does,
and perhaps you will often wish that you had her again as a playmate."

"We must have another game of battledore and shuttlecock on the lawn
after dinner," said Fanny, "you seem to like that, and on one side it
will be pleasant and shady."

Norman finding that Fanny had not complained of the way he had treated
her garden, became more amiable and agreed to her proposal.

Before going out, however, she persuaded him to sit quiet and listen to
a story, which she told him out of one of her picture-books.

The children were playing on the lawn, when Captain Vallery appeared
followed by a man carrying a large parcel. Norman went on throwing up
the shuttlecock, but Fanny ran to her papa to welcome him with a kiss.

"I have got something for you both, will you like to come in and see the
parcel opened," he said taking it from the man and going into the house.

Hearing his papa's remark Norman followed him and Fanny, eager to learn
what the parcel contained. Captain Vallery had placed it on a chair.
While he was speaking to his wife and Mrs Leslie, Norman ran up to it,
and although he had not even spoken to his papa, began pulling away at
the string.

"Ah, he is a zealous little fellow, he wishes to save me trouble,"
observed Captain Vallery, and Fanny hoped that such was the motive which
prompted Norman, though she wished he had shown greater pleasure at
seeing their papa come back.

Mrs Vallery at her husband's request now opened the parcel, which
Norman notwithstanding his efforts had been unable to do. Among other
articles which he had brought for her and Mrs Leslie, she drew out a
long parcel carefully done up in silver paper.

"This I think must be for Fanny," she said.

Fanny, her countenance beaming with pleasure, carefully unwrapped the
parcel, and exhibited a beautiful doll with a wax head and shoulders and
wax hands looking exactly, she thought, as if they were real flesh.

"Oh, thank you, papa, thank you,"