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THE TEDDY BEAR TREE.
By Margaret Wentworth Leiurhton.
"Why, Gordon," cried his mother,
"What are you doing, dear?"
"I'm going to plant my Teddy Bear?
Come, mamma, see, right here.
"And then perhaps tomorrow,
Or in a week, maybe,
Instead of just one Teddy Bear,
I may have twenty-three."
^ <
'His mother laughed and kissed him;
"You funny boy," she said;
"Now really do you think your bear
Will grow into a tree?"
Next morning, just at sunrise.
His mother heard a shout;
"He's growed, and here's a Teddy Tree!
Oh, mamma, hurry out!"
Now, sure enough, upon a bush
i wo liny leuuies swayeu.
(Oh, what a merry joke it was
That Gordon's mamma played!)
THE WAVE OF A FAIRY WAND.
GINA H. FAIRLIE.
Lily Lou sat on top of their little home and
swung her legs disconsolately. Lily Lou could
do this easily because her home was on a canal
boat and the lop of the house was only a few
feet above the deck; and the reason that Lily
Lou was disconsolate was, that she hated canals
and canal hoats and everything about them.
"Other girls have all sorts of good times,"
she grumbled. "And I never go anywhere or
do anything or see anything."
But as Lily Lou was staring just then at the
hare stone walls of the lock in which their boat
was slowly rising, it is not surprising that she
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S-s-swish! s-s-swish ! rippled the water softly
against the side of the boat. C-c-creak! c-ccreak!
sounded the windlass of the lock. How
Lily Lou hated those sounds! They seemed
never, never ending. As soon as they reached
their destination, they just turned and came
hack over the same old route as soon as they
had unloaded, and the sounds began all over
again.
"Halloo!" said a cheery voice close beside
her.
The boat had crept up and up with the rise
of the water until Lily Lou's head was nearly
level with the top of the lock, and she found
herself gazing into the friendly, smiling eyes
of a golden-haired fairy. At least, that is what
she looked like at the first glance, until Lily
Lou decided that she must be only one of the
girls she had been thinking about who had all
the good times and all the good things.
"If you aren't the luckiest!" the voice went
on, not enviously at all, but admiringly.
""What!" ejaculated Lily Lou, quite forgetting
her manners. But then she was so astonished.
She?lucky!
"Isn't it lovely to live in a boat all the
time?" the little stranger went on, " and know
that you don't have to get off unless you want
to, but just go sailing on and on?"
"You'd get tired of it sooner'n you thought,"
Li]y Lou interrupted. "I hate it!"
The little girl opened wide eyes. "Oh, no,
not really!"
"Imph-hmm," Lily Lou insisted. "It's so
PKE8BY TERlAtt OF THE EC
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slow and pokey, you never seem to get anywhere.
''
"Slow! Oh, but that's what I'd like; then
you'd have time to see all the beautiful things
you pass?the woods and the islands in the
lake and the locks?they're wonderful, I
think!"
Lily Lou sniffed. These were all such com
mon tilings to her that she'd never considered
them even worth looking at.
"And the sky, and the cloud pictures," the
little stranger went on; "we never get a really
good look at them in the city, you know?
there are so many tall buildings to shut them
out."
"Cloud pictures?" said Lily Lou, inquiringly
"Yes, there are always pictures in the sky
if tlinrn o ro /?1 An A a TJoitam 'f ?au
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them ? Look! look, there now! What does
that pile of Huffy ones look like?"
Lily Lou looked. "Soap-suds?" she suggested
practically.
"Oh, no!" cried the little girl disappointedly.
"I think they look like a flock of little
woolly sheep. See, see! Oh, don't you see them?
Look at the big ones chasing them and tumbling
on top of them and rolling them round
and round?oh?pouf! they're all gone! What
a pity"
Lily Lou was now gazing fascinated at the
billows of fleecy, white clouds. She'd never
heard or thought before of making pictures for
yourself out of the clouds in the sky, and
when she did begin she made them like the
things she knew best of all.
"Why, there's one," she cried excitedly,
"exactly like a grain elevator with two towers."
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Hnai s n gnun eievaion i ve seen lots
of passenger elevators at home, but never one
just for carrying grain.
Lily Lou laughed aloud and felt better at
once. There were some things after all that
she knew more about than the little stranger.
"Why?why?a grain elevator's a very, very
tall building?sometimes it has one tower and
sometimes it has more. It's always built near
the wharves, and all the farmers in the country
bring their grain into it and store it there;
and then we sail our barges alongside, and
they open the door of the shute and down the
grain pours into the hold of the barge till
we've got all we can carry."
"Oh, what fun it must be to see it?just like
a nrown wateriaiil" cried the little girl. "I
thought you said a few minutes ago that you
never saw anything interesting."
"Oh, that!" said Lily Lou, as if the things
she saw every day didn't count, just because
she saw them every day.
"Do tell me some more," pleaded the little
girl. "Don't you stop at places in your boat?
big cities and little cities? What do you see
there?"
"Just boats and wharves," said Lily Lou,
discouragingly, "that's all."
"Rut there are neonlo in thn hnnto
you talk to them and tell each other stories of
the things you did and saw on your last trip?
And wharves! Oh, I think wharves are the
most exciting places! There are always boats
coming in and going out and it's such fun
guessing what is in the big boxes and things
that are wheeled off them and who' they're
> 0 T H [July 31, 1912 I
going to anil what the people are like."
Lily Lou began to wonder if she hadn't missed
a good deal of fun and pleasure that she
might have had if she had only known how
close to her it always was.
Honk! honk ! honk! sounded a motor-horn
just then off among the trees beyond the lock.
"Ob, there's Daddy calling for me!" said
the little stranger. "He must have finished
putting on the new tire. Motoring's lovely,
but 1 wish," she said, smiling at Lily Lou,
"that instead I could go sailing off with you
into that lnvplv fnirv lnlrp Hioro Tl lnnlro no
if it might be full of surprises, and we haven't
time to see the beautiful surprises on the road,
Daddy makes the motor go so fast. Good-by,
good-by!" And with a wave of her hand the
golden-haired little stranger disappeared.
Lily Lou looked round her rather dazed. It
was the same old boat, to be sure, the same old
canal, the same old world?but different, somehow
or other. It was as if a fairy hand had
passed a magic wand before her eyes and she
saw things now that she never saw before?
blue, blue skies, vrith new pictures floating
across them every minute; woods and waving,
glittering fields with more shades of green in
them than she could count, shading off into
far-away blue hills; and an island-studded lake
lying before them into which they were drifting,
drifting slowly, now that the lock gates
were open.
"A lake full of surprises." Lily Lou brightened.
It looked as if it might be. There seemed
to he surprises waiting everywhere ahead
of her now.
"And I don't even know her name," sighed
Lily Lou regretfully. "I?I think I'll call her
the Fairy Girl, though. Why! why!" stretching
her arms above her head, "I feel quite happy
now and glad I'm alive and glad, gladdest
of all, that I live on a canal boat."
Which just shows what a fairy wand?if it
is the right kind?has the power to do sometimes.?Ex.
LITTLE BROTHER'S OFFERING.
"IIow much have you earned, Fred?" asked
Connie.
"Sixty-seven cents, and five more if Mrs.
Pitts pays me; but I don't believe she will,"
was the prompt answer. "How much have you
got?"
"I didn't begin to save till you had enough
to rattle, but there's forty-five cents in my
box. If I should give my gold dollar?but I
can't. I just love it. It makes me feel rich."
Little Brother was watching, and looking
curiously at the small heaps of coin.
"You've got all money," he said.
"Sure! What else could we have, Pepperkins?
"I've saved uzzer things."
"You don't mean that you've got a thankoffering?"
and Fred swung the "baby" into
a chair.
"I have?yes, sir. You never told me, but I
heard the mish'nary lady say how the brown
babies didn't have things to eat, and I'm goin'
to send some?in a ship."
Little Brother nodded gravely at every
word," but Fred laughed so he could scarcely
speak.
"Things to eat! You little goose I"
"Come to sister!" cried Connie. "Tell sister
all about it." And with one puzzled, griev
ed glance at Fred, he clasped her hand and
drew her toward the stairs, then up to the little
playroom, chattering as he went.
"Didn't the Mish'nary lady in Sabbathschool
say they were hungry and most deadt