, her eyes beaming from among her tumbled curls, at once turned
happy and expectant, and when her hat had been straightened and her boa
removed so that her necklace could gleam resplendently about her fair,
round throat, she was seated against a tree-trunk and listened with all her
ears to the titles Mrs. Evringham offered.

After careful consideration, she made her choice, and Mrs. Evringham and
Jewel settling themselves comfortably, the former began to read aloud the
tale of--

THE GOLDEN DOG

If it had not been for the birds and brooks, the rabbits and squirrels,
Gabriel would have been a very lonely boy.

His older brothers, William and Henry, did not care for him, because he was
so much younger than they, and, moreover, they said he was stupid. His
father might take some interest in him when he grew bigger and stronger and
could earn money; but money was the only thing Gabriel's father cared for,
and when the older brothers earned any they tried to keep it a secret from
the father lest he should take it away from them. Gabriel had a stepmother,
but she was a sorry woman, too full of care to be companionable. So he
sought his comrades among the wild things in the woods, to get away from
the quarrels at home.

He was a muscular, rosy-cheeked lad, and in the sports at school he could
out-run and out-jump the other boys and was always good-natured with them;
but even the children at the little country school did not like him very
well, because the very things they enjoyed the most did not amuse him.

He tried to explain to them that the birds were his friends, and therefore
he could not rob their nests; but they laughed at him almost as much as
when he tried to dissuade them from mocking old Mother Lemon, as they
passed her cottage door on their way to and from school.

She was an old cross-patch, of course, they told him, or else she would not
live alone on the edge of a forest, with nobody but a cat and owls for
company.

"Perhaps she would be glad to have some one better for company," Gabriel
replied.

"Go live with her, yourself, then, Gabriel," said one of the boys
tauntingly. "That's right! Go leave your miser father, counting his gold
all night while you are asleep, and too stingy to give you enough to eat,
and go and be Mother Lemon's good little boy!" and then all the children
laughed and hooted at Gabriel, who walked up to the speaker and knocked him
over on the grass with such apparent ease and s