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generally, and I have never seen the inside of a church since I went there. Do ask Mrs. Norris to let me go back; I will try to please her, indeed I will!

And so she did.

WHAT MAY HAPPEN TO A THIMBLE.

COME about the meadow,

Hunt here and there:
Where's mother's thimble ?

Can you tell where?

Jane saw her wearing it,

Fan saw it fall,

Ned isn't sure

That she dropped it at all.

Has a mouse carried it

Down to her hole-
Home full of twilight-
Shady, small soul?

Can she be darning there,

Ere the light fails,
Small ragged stockings,
Tiny torn tails?

Did a finch fly with it

Into the hedge?

Or a reed-warbler

Down in the sedge?

Are they carousing there All the night through? Such a great goblet, Brimful of dew!

Have beetles crept with it
Where oak-roots hide?
There have they settled it
Down on its side?

Neat little kennel,
So cosy and dark,
Has one crept into it
Trying to bark?

Have the ants covered it

With straw and sand?

Roomy bell-tent for them, So tall and grand. Where the red soldier ants

Lie, loll, and lean; While the blacks steadily

Build for their queen.

Has a huge dragon-fly
Borne it (how cool!)

To his snug dressing-room
By the clear pool?
There will he try it on
For a new hat,

Nobody watching

But one water-rat?

Did the flowers fight for it,
While, undescried,

One selfish daisy
Slipped it aside ?

Now has she plunged it in

Close to her feetNice private water-tank For summer heat?

Did spiders snatch at it,
Wanting to look

At the bright pebbles

Which lie in the brook?

Now are they using it?

(Nobody knows), Safe little diving-bell, Shutting so close!

Did a rash squirrel there,

Wanting to dine,

Think it some foreign nut,

Dainty and fine?

Can he have swallowed it

Up in that oak ?

We, if we listen,

Shall soon hear him choke.

Has it been buried by

Cross imps and hags,
Wanting to see us
Like beggars in rags ?

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THE ARITHMETIC PRIZE.

"I SAY, Ted, who will get the arithmetic prize this year ?" said a rosy-faced little boy to one of his friends, as they raced out of school.

"What, in the first-class? Why, my brother, of course. Who did you think ?"

"Well, I did not know; but father said, last night at tea-time, that he should ask the committee to let him have a boy out of the first class to help with the little ones: and he said he thought whoever got the arithmetic prize would-but I forgot, I was not to say anything about it."

"Well, you have said something now," replied Ted Musgrove. "I hope Phil won't get the place. I should like to see him teaching me! He is always at his books! Father says it frightens him to see Phil's book of figures. He's doing fractions now, denominators, and mixed numbers, and I don't know what all. There is one awful-looking sum, that slopes all over the slate. I did ask him about that, and he said I was to go on dividing till it came to nothing. I don't know what he meant; and when I asked him, he said, 'Don't bother!' Oh, I do hate sums! at least what you do on a slate."

"You mean you like mental arithmetic?" said the schoolmaster's son, who was given to long words.

"Yes, I don't mind reckoning in my head, for then no one can ask how one did the thing, and it comes out right somehow."

"I suppose," said a third boy, who had joined the two others, "Phil does all the books now, doesn't he ?"

"No, he don't; he says he hasn't time; and mother says he is not to be teased, he is so clever; and so I have to help her all I can. Sometimes, I wish Phil wasn't so very clever, he might be of some use; but I forget, I was to go down to the

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