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330 the presbyterl
j STORIES TOR 1
AUNT JEANNETTE'S STORY.
By Annie H. Donnell.
"I wish I didn't have any hands, so there!" snapped
Clem. "Then nobody'd say, 'Won't you please to pick
some string beans for dinner?' and 'Won't you please
to pick some currants for tea?' an' 'Won't you please
tn cotnr* enmn '
"Chickens for Thanksgiving!" finished Danny, gleefull)'.
Clem laughed, and then, of course, she felt
better.
"But you couldn't make those lovely currant buns
out o' mud 'thout any hands," little Doris remarked,
gravely. She smacked her lips as if her mouth watered
for a bun.
"Then I'd make 'em with my feet!" laughed Clem.
She had put on her "broad-brimmer" and picked up
her baskets, ready for the currant-picking. The little
rain-cloud had quite blown over.
Aunt Jeannette was writing a letter to her soldier.
The children thought she was away off in the Philippine
Islands, and it almost startled them, when her
sweet voice sounded suddenly in their ears.
"I saw a little boy making mud pies with his feet,"
said Aunt Jeannetts.
"Aunt)f! With his feet?"
"Yes, with his two little feet, and he did it in a very
workmanlike way, too. You would have been surprised."
"O aunty, don't stop! Tell us the rest!" pleaded the
three children, eagerly.
"But I'm afraid to keep Clem waiting?it will be so
hot in the currant patch soon," Aunt Jeannetts objected.
^'Hot! I'd rather pick currants in?in Vanilla, aunty,
than not to hear that story!" Clem cried. So aunty
slipped her soldier's letter in her portfolio and told
L 11 v 111 LUC O LCI y
"I think he must have been on his way home from
school. He was a bright-faced little fellow about as
old as Clem, and he had on a little blue cape like a
soldier boy. It hung round him in loose folds. There
was a new house going up on the street, and he was
making his pies out of a little heap of sand beside the
great box the men were mixing mortar in. I wish you
could have seen the neat way he made them!"
"O, aunty, with his feet!" breathed Clem.
"With his feet. He drew the moist sand toward 1pm
into a little pile with one foot, and worked and stirred it
and patted it with the other. He was so busy he didn't
notirp nnvhnrlv watrhino* him until T ?nir1 'fTnw mnrh
do you ask for your pies?' and then he looked up into
my face and smiled. We felt quite acquainted then."
"Then I s'pose you shook hands," little Doris said.
Aunt Jeannette's sweet face sobered.
"No, but we both smiled. That's a beautiful way to
get acquainted."
" 'They are beautiful pies,' I said, 'but why do you
make them with your feet? It's such a funny way.'
"Oh, if I hadn't said that! I am sorry for it still, and
I said it years ago. For when the little fellow looked
\N OF THE SOUTH. March 16, 1910.
"//? CHILDREN f
iij) at mc gravely, I knew all at once why he stood
there patting his little sand pies with his feet. He
need not have told me. There were no hands under
his little blue soldier cape."
"O Mimtv I"
"Oh, no, please no, aunty!"
The tears were in Aunt Jeannette's eyes.
"'But I don't mind?huh!' the little fellow said,
cheerily. 'There's heaps o' things a fellow can do with
his feet. There's run an' walk an' skip an'?this.' And
he went back to his pies again, whistling. I bought
a dozen pies and went away and left them there. Whenever
I think of him now, it's standing there still, whistling
and molding his little round, wet pies."
There was silence in the big, bright nursery for a
minute. Danny broke it with a soft little whistle that
had quivery-quaverv notes in it. Clem was shuffling
her stout little boots about, as if she were trying to
make imaginary sand pies on the carpet. They were
ciumsy nttie ieet at tnat work.
"I couldn't do it, aunty?I couldn't!" she said, soberly.
"Is that all of the story, aunty?" little Doris asked.
"Why, no, not quite. I used to see the little fellow
often after that, and I found out some other things he
could do. He could print and add sums on the blackboard."
"Now, aunty!"
"Now, aunty! But it was true that he could. Wait
till I tell you how. His brother went to school with
him every morning and took the shoes and stockings
off from his little nink-nnd-wl-iit#* ?-v.
,, ...w *vvn x livu tut itav.uvi
lifted him up on a high stool and let him take the chalk
in his bits of toes and go to work. That is truly what
happened every day. And they told me he was a real
little scholar. That's al|, little Doris."
Clem picked up her basket again and started across
the room. At the door she stopped.
"I'm going to pick the currants first and then the
string-beans," she said. "An' then, aunty, don't you
want me to pick you those red clovers to dry? You
needn't say, 'Won't you, please?'" she added, softly,
looking down at her little brown hands, "because I feel
just exactly like picking things."?Selected.
GLADYS BROOKS' PARTIES.
By Ernest Gilmore.
You have heard about parties without "fuss and
feathers," have you not? Well, I want to tell you
about a dear little trirl who tra^?
o HllllWUl al,J
"fuss" but with a good many "feathers." It came about
in this way: Gladys Brooks noticed the little sparrows
hopping about in the cold snow crust and in the frozen
ground, vainly seeking for a bit of grain.
'Mamma," she said, "I think the birdies are hungry.
See them hunting and hunting for something to
eat, and all they can find is snow. Poor little creatures!
What can I feed them, mamma?"
"Ask Dinah for a piece of stale bread," was the answer,
"and you can crumb it up for the sparrows."
That was Gladys' first party. She put on her coat