ndy.

Harry was cured of snapping. He had had quite enough of it for a
lifetime, and the catch-contradictions of the household now made him
shudder. Polly had not had the benefit of his experiences, and yet she
improved also.

In the first place, snapping, like other kinds of quarrelling,
requires two parties to it, and Harry would never be a party to
snapping any more. And when he gave civil and kind answers to Polly's
smart speeches, she felt ashamed of herself, and did not repeat them.

In the second place, she heard about the Snap-Dragons. Harry told all
about it to her and to the hot-tempered gentleman.

"Now do you think it's true?" Polly asked the hot-tempered gentleman.

"Hum! Ha!" said he, driving his hands through his hair. "You know I
warned you, you were going to the Snap-Dragons."

* * * * *

Harry and Polly snubbed "the little ones" when they snapped, and
utterly discountenanced snapping in the nursery. The example and
admonitions of elder children are a powerful instrument of nursery
discipline, and before long there was not a "sharp tongue" amongst all
the little Skratdjs.

But I doubt if the parents ever were cured. I don't know if they heard
the story. Besides, bad habits are not easily cured when one is old.

I fear Mr. and Mrs. Skratdj have yet got to dance with the Dragons.

DANDELION CLOCKS.

Every child knows how to tell the time by a dandelion clock. You blow
till the seed is all blown away, and you count each of the puffs--an
hour to a puff. Every child knows this, and very few children want to
know any more on the subject. It was Peter Paul's peculiarity that he
always did want to know more about everything; a habit whose first and
foremost inconvenience is that one can so seldom get people to answer
one's questions.

Peter Paul and his two sisters were playing in the pastures. Rich,
green, Dutch pastures, unbroken by hedge or wall, which
stretched--like an emerald ocean--to the horizon and met the sky. The
cows stood ankle-deep in it and chewed the cud, the clouds sailed
slowly over it to the sea, and on a dry hillock sat Mother, in her
broad sun-hat, with one eye to the cows and one to the linen she was
bleaching, thinking of her farm.

Peter Paul and his sisters had found another little hillock where,
among some tufts of meadow-flowers which the cows had not yet eaten,
were dandelion clocks. They divided them quite fairly, and began to