Nine Little Goslings

"Your face looks as warm as toast, too," remarked her Father.

"Yes, Papa, that's because I toasted to-night. Dinah was bringing the clothes from the lines, so she let me."

"I stamped the butter, Papa," added Lulu. "Look, isn't it a pretty little pat?"

"And I sifted the sugar for the blackberries," put in Bertha from her place at Mamma's knee.

"You don't mind, do you Mamma?" observed Mary anxiously. "Di pinned a big apron over my frock. See, it hasn't got a spot on it."

"I'm glad she did," said Mrs. Frisbie, surprised. "But it doesn't matter so much how you dress here, you know. It was in the other house I was so particular."

"But I like to please you, Mamma, and you always want us to look nice, you know. We mean to be very careful now, because if we don't we shall worry you all the time."

Mrs. Frisbie put her arm round Mary and kissed her.

"I declare," she said, half-laughing, half-crying. "This house is pleasant. It seems snugger somehow, as if we were closer together than we ever were before. I guess I shall like it after all."

"Hurrah!" cried Prince John, rousing from his fatigue at these comfortable words. "That's right, Molly, dear! You don't know what good it does me to hear you say so. If only you can look bright and the chicks keep well and happy, I shall go to work with a will, and the world will come right yet." He smiled with a look of conscious power as he spoke; his eyes were keen and eager.

I think that just then, as the children gathered round the table, as Mrs. Frisbie took up the teapot and began to pour the tea, and her husband pushed back his chair, – that just then, at that very moment, the Fairy entered the room. Nobody saw her, but there she was! She smiled on the group; then she took from her pocket another bubble, more splendid than the one she had brought before, and tossed it into the air above Prince John's head. "There," she said, "catch that. You'll have it this time, and it won't break and go to pieces as the first one did. Look at it sailing up, up, up, – this bubble has wings, but it sails toward and not away from you. Catch it, as I say, and make it yours. But even when it is yours, when you hold it in your hand and are sure of it, you'll be no luckier and no happier, my lucky Prince, than you are at this moment, in this small house, with love about you, hope in your heart, and all these precious little people to work for, and to reward you when work is done."