frighten Topsy to be quiet. No matter how long she lay after the first 'Wa-oo,' Topsy would vexingly go on: 'Wa-oo! Wa-a-00! Wa-a-oo!!!' as fast as ever she could open and shut her mouth, until the door was opened. Sometimes, if no one else did it, Katie would jump up, and run down in her night-dress, let Topsy out, and then creep into bed again for another dosy-wink. But it was no use. Topsy would 'Wa-oo' away again like mad, as if she were trying to sing a merry song to a sorrowful, psalm tune-like:

"Awake little sluggard, 'tis time to arise."—or, "How doth the little busy bee,"

And, all because of Topsy Wopsy's regular 'Wa ooing,' Katie had to 'awake,' I can assure you; and to be busy' too. Was this a bad thing in Topsy, or a good thing? All I can say is, if you can't get up in good time in a morning, get you a cat like Katie's.

"So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think! wilt thou let it

Slip useless away?

Out of Eternity

This new Day is born;

Into Eternity,

At night, will return.

Behold it aforetime

No eye ever did:

'So soon it forever

From all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning

Another blue Day:

Think! wilt thou let it

Slip useless away?"

THERE were seventeen small houses, all thatched and whitewashed. The farmer's house was the largest among the lot. the lot. The houses all sat, as it were, among the soft yellow sand-hills, near the sea. There wasn't 'up-stairs' in any of the houses. All the living rooms, and weaving rooms, and sleeping rooms, were on the flat floor.

The seventeen families, in the seventeen houses, always tried to be at home on Christmas Eve. I mean, they tried never to be away out of the village on that night if they could help it. The sailor got home from sea, if he could. The fisherman stayed ashore. The hand-loom weaver would not thread a single shuttle. The farmer foddered his cattle early, and the farmer's

grandson that lived with him was home from Boarding School.

Rob Reet was his name. He was nearly nine Christmases old; light-haired, bright-eyed, palewhite cheeks, with just a touch of pink in them that you couldn't see in the candle-light.

But didn't he turn that little world, with the seventeen families in it, upside down whenever he came home for holidays! Bob was the boy to ride the donkey round the field; to climb the hay-loft, to munch the horse-beans; to make friends of the ducks, and the hens, and the new calves, and the old cows, and to fish for sparlings' in the river near by until he toppled head-first one day into the deepest part of it, and got such a cold ducking that he said he didn't care for fish after that, they were not worth wading for.

It was Christmas Eve. All the seventeen little windows seemed to be winking at one

9

another by candle-light, as much as to say: "We know what's coming"

Bob wanted to stay up all night. He dodged about a long while. The farmer had invited company that night, to come and burn the yule log with him. If Bob could only just keep quiet another hour, his grandfather might forget, and Bob might be up all night for the first time in his life. But it wasn't to be this time. The old clock struck eight. Grandfather looked up as soon as he heard the old clock rattle, getting ready to strike. He might have known what Bob was thinking, for just as the clock struck one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, at a very slow stroke, he said: "Clock-says-our-Bob-mustgo-to-bed."

He loved and

And Bob went obediently. feared his grandfather. His grandmother he loved and didn't fear; and she saw through her

life-worn eyes what Bob was thinking. So she