You should have seen the china-closet. It was under a bent root, and all the dishes were white with violet markings. One might have thought they were big and little and middling-sized clam-shells, if one had not seen them in a china-closet.

There was a bedroom between two big roots. A doll was taking a nap there, not on a pine-pillow, but on a whole bed of pleasant-smelling pine needles which had dropped off a tree in the neighbourhood. The mistress of the house was in the kitchen cooking, and the kitchen, of course, was where the sun came through a break in the branches. One must have a patch of sun in a kitchen, for how can you bake without it? When I went into this kitchen, there was a cake baking, with an ornament on the top that looked quite like an acorn.

I was invited to stay for lunch, and I will tell you what we had: First, there were brown-bread cutlets, and smooth white stone potatoes, and a wonderful salad made of maple leaves and pepper-grass. Then for dessert we had the cake I had seen baking, and milk. The cake had a brown layer made from the garden beds and a yellow layer made from the path, and was iced with white sand. You will guess that the brown bread cutlets and the milk were what people getting up plays call "practicable," which is just a grown-up word for "really and truly."

A tree is one of the nicest play-houses a person can have. But suppose it is a rainy day! We will play it is a rainy day, and we will go and go until we get to a house with a steep roof. And we will go in, and go upstairs, and then upstairs again until we get to a garret, where we can see the rafters sloping to the ridge over our heads, and the inside of the shingles. On the floor are trunks and boxes and barrels, and all sorts of things are hanging from the rafters. Sometimes we hear the pigeons running on the outsides of the shingles and cooing under the eaves. It is a lonely sound. It is rather dark, too, but we are brave, and we get past two saddles, and a row of white petticoats, and a dim place where there are a lot of old books with strange dark pictures in them, which one likes to be sure are shut in tight. At last we get round a corner and find a gable with a pointed window, and there is a play-house where a little girl and eight dolls live. There are four rooms in the play-house, though if you are not thinking, you may very likely walk right through the walls and not know it. On one side of the window is a bedroom, and on the other side is the kitchen. The dining room and the living room are in the corners nearest the rest of the garret.

The little girl's big sister put up some pictures on the sloping wooden walls to suit each room. One of them is very useful when the little girl is deciding what to play. It is seven little pictures on a card with verses to explain them. You can read the verses at the beginning of this chapter; I am sorry the pictures are not there, too.

This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes"—because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse, and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much more fun if you have the right things to do it with.

"Tuesday, I neatly press them," is a good day, too, but "Wednesday, I mend their little hose," is not. One cannot sit still and make believe sew, for many minutes. When mother was told about this trouble, she looked at the pictures and said, "Why, there's no sweeping day! As soon as the stockings are mended on Wednesday, you had better sweep, and tidy things up a little." Mother often wants things "tidied up" when it isn't in the game. She says, she does not keep her little girl's hat on the dining table, nor leave her bed unmade, and she cannot have the dolls brought up that way either.

The Friday game is one of the best. The two dolls that have night dresses are most often sick. Of course, it is a great care to have a doll sick, but it does make a great many interesting things to do. She may need cold-water cloths, or a hot-water bottle, or a poultice, and there is always medicine to give and meals to serve on a tray. Then the bed should be made over often. The little girl who lives in this play-house likes to have her dolls ill when she has company, because then there is some one to be the doctor.

"Saturday something or other," usually means cooking, and that, too, is a favourite game for company. Sometimes the little girl goes down into the "really and truly" kitchen to market, or sometimes mother sends up a little cake baked in a doll's pan. That makes a very grand occasion. The table must be laid with all the dishes, and napkins if possible, when there is a cake from the big kitchen.

A great many things can happen in a garret play-house, besides housekeeping. Sometimes it is so still up there, that one knows one must be in a deep forest, or out on the plains; and, of course, in that case, the cooking or nursing may be interrupted by a band of robbers, or an attack from Indians, or one may have a visit from an escaping prisoner, and besides, there are always long, dangerous journeys to take through the garret. In fact, every time one hears a new story, something unusual is likely to happen in the play-house.

Have you a play-house? I hope you have. Nowadays, when rents are so high, and when many people live in flats and apartments, it is often hard to get a play-house, but it can usually be managed in some way. If we have a nursery or a play-room all our own, then it is easy to have a play-house. We only have to get mother, or nurse to give us a corner to fix as we like, and to advise us about sorting things. Perhaps they will let us make the whole room into a play-house, but we really can keep house nicely in a much smaller space than that. The great point is to get the things together which belong together. If the bedroom things stand together, that is all we need to have a bedroom, and if the kitchen things are together, there is the kitchen. If we have a dining table, why, there is the dining room, and our living room can be anywhere where mother likes us to have most of the chairs.

But even if we have not a play-room we can still have a house. I know some clever dolls and their mother who keep house in the cupboard part of an old-fashioned washstand. The way they manage is to make the cupboard any room they wish to use. Monday morning it is a laundry, and every night it is a bedroom, and if they give a luncheon it is a dining room, and Saturday it is a kitchen. They keep the furniture which does not suit the room they are using in the drawer of the washstand which is over their heads.

I know another family who live under a dressing table. The legs of the table show where the corners of their house are, and they change the room into anything they need it for, as the other people do.

One little girl I know, whose name is Esther, lives in a flat and has only a bureau drawer for her housekeeping things. This is quite hard, for it means so much packing and unpacking, and parting with things she would like to keep when the drawer gets too full. She has to take her two dolls and a few things she thinks they will need into the parlour or the bedroom and play house there. In the bedroom, she plays it is night, because it is always nearly dark in there. Her mother lets her play with her big grown-up beds and chairs and stoves and irons. If she did not, Esther would have a hard time keeping house for her dolls.

But it is not always the people who live in flats who have not room for their things, is it? Sometimes after Christmas, or a birthday, one just feels as if one were trying to keep house in a toy shop. The best cure for this trouble is to give things away. Because—it is dreadful to think about—there are people who have no dolls: and there are people who have not so much as a tin cup to begin housekeeping with; and there are little girls who have real babies to look after, and real meals to cook who would just dearly love to have the games and toys that have to be packed away in closets and drawers because their owners have so many other things.

It is easy to say, give things away, but, my stars! how hard it is to decide which to give. One just can't give away the new things, and one feels so fond of the old ones, when one gets them out and looks at them. The only way to part with them is to think of Saint Martin cutting his cloak in two for the beggar, or something inspiring like that. Even then one feels a little dreary.

Once there was a little girl whose family moved into a smaller house. There was not room in her new play-house for the many things she had in her old one. Some of them had to be given away. One decision was so hard to make that she remembered about it after she was a grown-up woman. There was a little green wagon with yellow wheels, which she had always had, and which her older sisters had played with before she was born, and there was a little orange-coloured cart with four red wheels, which her father had brought out from town, a week or two before, filled with soap.

Two wagons were too many for the new play-house, and mother said keep the green one, because the other was only an "advertisement"; and the older sisters said keep the green one, because it was better and they had played with it; and father just smiled and said, "You must decide."

When no one was looking, the little girl took the little orange-coloured wagon with four red wheels, and the big letters round the outside, which made it an "advertisement," and put it in the box mother was packing for some other children, and it hurt so to do it that she could not quite help crying.

Some of us are troubled more with having too few things than too many, are we not? We can make a game of getting out of this trouble. We must all be discoverers and inventors, and if there is something needed in the play-house, we must keep our eyes wide open to see what else will do or what we can find to make into the thing we want. It spoils the hunt, and the surprise, if some one else tells you what to do, but one or two little things will show what the game is like. For instance, if it is a bed you need, try a strong pasteboard box, not very deep. If you mind its having no legs, then you must go on a journey and have it a berth on a car or a ship.

A cigar-box makes a good trunk for a small doll, especially the boxes which have trays in them. A doll with a cigar-box trunk will never have moths in her clothes.

Paper napkins are useful for dolls' tablecloths, and for napkins when they are cut into small squares. They will even do for sheets, if mother cannot spare us white "pieces" that are big enough. A bandanna handkerchief, or a scrap of bright calico, makes a good bedquilt.

Shells we have brought home from a day at the beach are convenient for dishes. Radiators are splendid stoves. And did you ever find out how much closet room there is under a bed? With the help of a few pins, one can hang all the dolls' clothes from the springs, and shut them in with the counterpane, if it happens to be a long one. But if mother does not want you to do this, you mustn't.

You will be able to make a great many discoveries and inventions, if you think what you want, and then think what to make it out of. But the best and most wonderful thing about a play-house is, that if we have to, we can make one anywhere, or out of anything. Once, two little girls wrote home about a visit they had paid, "We had two rag dolls and we played house." Even one little girl, without so much as a rag doll, can have a play-house. She has only to imagine, that is, pretend, and there it is—with rooms, and staircases, and people, and everything needful. It can be big or little; and in the country or in the city. She can do the washing, or give a dinner party; take care of a sick doll, or work in the garden, just as she pleases. It is easier and happier to play with the pleasant things people give us, and to be able to see and touch most of the things in our play-houses, but we always want some imagined things, too. And if it should happen that we are in a place where we "have nothing to play with," then we can imagine and pretend, and go and play in the play-house we always have with us. In a second, we can build it into a wigwam, or a palace, or a cave, or a great castle, or it can be just the house we live in when we are at home.

Sometimes, when we have played a good while in the play-house, we feel tired, and if it isn't a nap we want, perhaps it is that we would like to go and play in a play-house somebody else has made. We need not take a journey to do this, we only need some one to tell us a story, or a story-book to read to ourselves. We might choose to read "Cinderella," for that is the princess of housekeeping stories, or it may be that we will find one we like, if we go on reading this book.

IRISH STEW

Do you ever have Irish Stew for luncheon? Most Irish Stews are a good deal alike, but this is the story of one that was different.

Once upon a time there was an Irishman who lived in a little two-roomed hut on the edge of a bog. All day, he cut peats in the bog, for that is the way he made his living. It was not a very good living; in fact, he was very poor indeed. At night, when he came back to the hut, there were often only a few potatoes for supper, which he boiled in a pot over the fire. His old father had died a few years before, and that was the reason he lived alone.

One chilly, foggy night, the Irishman had come home late through the wet and the dark, and lighted his fire. There was very little for supper, and he had not had a chance to cook that, when Thump! Thump! came a knock on the door. He was ever so frightened, but he thought it would be better to open the door than have it thumped in. When he did open it—Preserve us! there were five big robbers with knives, and pistols, and high boots and fierce, bright eyes. They all crowded into the little hut, and threw more peat on the fire and demanded supper. The Irishman apologized, and said he had only potatoes. The robbers said they had to have something better than that, and all five of them laid their five big knives on the table with a look which meant, "Supper or your life!"

The Irishman went into the other little room and sat down on a chest to think. There was nothing in the room but the chest, and nothing in the chest but a few old clothes, and the more he tried to think, the less he was able to do it. At last, for no reason at all, he opened the chest. In it lay an old cloak, which his father had worn forty years and more.

No sooner had he seen it, than he went back to the room where the robbers were, and they saw him take the pot into the little room, and very soon come back and put all the potatoes into it and some water, and hang it over the fire, which was now so hot and bright that the pot soon began to boil. It simmered, and bubbled and steamed and soon the robbers began to sniff their supper. It did not smell like anything they had ever had before, but was not bad for a cold, foggy night. Pretty soon the Irishman set the pot on the table, and the robbers ate heartily. The Irishman was busy arranging something near the door. All of a sudden, one robber choked. He choked, and choked, and two others beat him on the back. He coughed and coughed, and then, something flew out of his mouth. It was a button.

The Irishman turned up his eyes to the roof and said, "Ah me, that is the last of a good old cloak." Before the robbers could move, he had opened the door and disappeared into the fog.

KING ALFRED AND THE CAKES

A good while ago there was a king of England named Alfred. He was a great and good king, but in spite of this, he had many enemies, who tried to take his kingdom away from him. Once, after a battle, the country was so overrun with his enemies, that he had to separate from his followers and go away in disguise. You would never have guessed he was a king when he started, and when, after he had wandered a few days in the forest, he came to a cowherd's hut, he looked like a hungry, ragged beggar. The cowherd and his wife gave him supper, and let him stay all night, and gave him some breakfast next morning. After breakfast, he sat for a long time looking into the fire, thinking of his kingdom, and of the dangers and sorrows of his people. The cowherd's wife was a hard-working woman, and it provoked her to see a great big man dreaming over the fire all the morning. She said to herself, "If he has no work of his own to attend to, he shall just help with mine." She put some meal cakes on a board to bake before the fire, and told the King to watch them carefully while she went out to feed the pig.

The King said he would watch them, but he kept on thinking about his army, and the heavy taxes, and by and by the woman came back.

There was smoke in the room, but she could see that the stranger was still sitting beside the fire, and that her cakes were burned to cinders. My, my, but she was angry. She boxed her guest's ears soundly, little dreaming that she was laying hands on the Sacred Person of the King, and might be hanged for it. The King, however, took her blows and her scolding, for he was very sorry he had let the cakes burn.

Afterward, when he had driven out his enemies and was at home again in his own castle he told what a scolding he had got for thinking about his troubles when he should have been baking the cakes.

ROAST PIG

Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, nobody in the world knew how to cook. People were not as dreadfully hungry on that account as you might think, because, you see, they ate their food uncooked. No one had ever cooked, and no one had ever thought of it; no one had ever eaten cooked food, and no one knew how pleasant it tasted.

This is the story of the way a little Chinese boy found out how to roast pig.

His name was Bo-bo and he had been left at home by his father, Ho-ti, to look after their hut, and their one big pig, and their nine little pigs. Bo-bo, was fond of playing with fire, and what did he do but set fire to some straw, and that set fire to the hut, and burned it down. A much more serious matter was that the one big pig and the nine little pigs were burned along with the hut.

Bo-bo was dreadfully frightened when he saw what he had done. He knew his father would beat him, and he began to cry. He also poked round among the ruins of the hut, though he did not hope to find anything. As he was turning over the embers, he found one of the little burnt pigs, and tried to pull it out. It was very hot, and burnt his hands, and he did just what you or I would have done—put his burnt fingers in his mouth.

The instant his hands reached his mouth, Bo-bo forgot all about being burned. He licked his fingers, but not because they hurt him. He did not know why he did lick them, but he kept on. Neither he nor any one else in the world had ever tasted such a wonderful taste.

Pretty soon, it came to him that it was the pig which tasted so delicious, and no sooner had he thought this, than he sat down in the ruins of the hut and began to eat great pieces of the little burnt pig. While he was making the best meal he had ever had in his life, his father came home, and when he saw that the hut was burnt down and that his son was eating some horrible food that no one else had ever eaten before, he began to beat Bo-bo with the stick he had in his hand. But Bo-bo did not seem to feel it. He hunted in the ashes for another pig and thrust it into his father's hands. Then the same thing happened which had happened to him. The pig burned Ho-ti's fingers and he put them in his mouth, and after that he had no time to think of beating any one, but sat down with his son in the ashes and made a good dinner.

From that time on, whenever they had little pigs, they burned down their hut to roast them. When the neighbours found it out, they thought it very wicked of Ho-ti and Bo-bo to eat burnt pig, but as soon as they were persuaded to taste it, they changed their minds, and then everybody was burning down his house in order to roast his pigs. After a long while, some one found out that one could cook without burning one's house down, which I am sure you will agree was a great discovery.

—Some day, when you go to school, you will have this story given to you to read—for a lesson!

THE KING'S KITCHEN

When King Arthur was King of England, a boy named Gareth, was growing up in a castle far away from Camelot, the King's city. But he had two brothers who were at Court, and who were Knights of the Order of the Round Table, and when they came home, now and then, Gareth asked them more questions than you could count about the King and his knights, and the Court, and tournaments, and battles. Every day, he rode and practised with lance and sword, and exercised in all ways that would make him strong and skilful with arms. And always he tried to be brave and to be gentle toward weak things and to tell the truth. And the reason for all this was that, more than anything else in the world, he longed to be in the service of the King, and to be a Knight of the Round Table.

As Gareth grew older, and more and more worthy to be made a knight, his mother, Bellicent, sorrowed and grieved. Her husband was very, very old, and her two elder sons had gone away to the Court, and she could not bear to have Gareth leave her, for he was the youngest and last. Though she saw that his heart's desire was to be with the King, yet she felt as if her heart would break if he went. She tried to make him especially happy at home; she tried to persuade him that he was not skilful or brave enough to be a knight; she told him of dangers and wounds, and besought him not to go. Again and again he asked her permission to go away and earn his knighthood; again and again she refused.

One day when he had spoken so bravely and truly that she knew not how to resist him longer, the thought came to her to test his great desire to be with the King, and she said to him: "If you desire so greatly to serve the King, give the proof of it which I shall ask of you. Go to the King and ask him to let you serve him in his kitchen for a year and a day, and tell no one your name and rank until the time is over."

She thought he would refuse to do it, but he kissed and thanked her, and quickly made ready to go to Camelot. For he wanted to serve the King, and this was a way of doing it, though not the one he had hoped for.

He journeyed a day and a night, and came to Camelot, the wonderful big city which he had never seen before. In the morning, the King sat in the Great Hall of his palace to hear the requests and troubles of his people. There Gareth came, and stood before him. And when he raised his eyes to the King's quiet face, and met his eyes, he loved him and longed more than ever to serve him. It was a little hard, when he was longing to be made a knight, and to be sent on an adventure, just to ask to be a kitchen-boy; but he did it, and the King granted his request.

So joyous and strong was he when he went out from the presence of the King, that he felt nothing would ever be hard to do again. But there were things which were hard. The kitchen was a great stone room with an earth floor, and a fireplace at either end as big as a little room. When the great fires were lit it was mightily hot between, and there was smoke and hurry, and jostling of servants, and there were some bad-tempered people and a great deal of hard work. There were trenchers and platters to be scoured, and big iron pots to be lifted about and washed, and roasting meats to be watched and turned before the fires. The cooking tanned Gareth's face and hands as riding in the hot sun had never done. When he could, he would run out into the courtyard, and play games with the other kitchen-boys, and when they were tired, they would sit against the wall and he would tell long tales he had read, and some that he made up, about knights and dragons and enchanted forests and robbers. The stories he loved best to tell, though, were stories of the King.

Often these play-times were broken in upon by the Master of the Kitchens, who called them back to their tasks with no great gentleness. Especially was he a hard master to Gareth; and, strangely enough, this was because Gareth was willing and cheerful, for there are people with such crooked places in their minds that they cannot see a person working gladly at a hard task but they want nothing so much as to see if they cannot break their cheerfulness. And that was the sort of master Gareth found in the King's Kitchen. He missed his rides over the downs in the clear air, and the right to go and come as he pleased. But when things seemed hard he cast off the thought and laughed to himself, saying, "It is for the King." In a little while, too, he learned to take fault-finding, and, now and again, a blow, in quietness. And this, too, was for the King.

As the days came and went, Bellicent, alone now with her old husband, thought of her son day and night; and the tasks that he must do and the discomforts he must suffer seemed to her a thousand times worse than he ever thought them. At last, when hardly a month of his trial had yet gone by, she could bear it no longer, but sent a messenger to the King to tell him the story, and to take to Gareth a horse and armour and all things that he would need when it should please the King to make him a knight.

After the King had seen the messenger he sent for Gareth, and Gareth left his scouring and went gaily and eagerly to him. He was glad in his love for the King, and I think he may have felt that he had borne rather unusual things for his sake. As he came near, the King loved him for his youth and gaiety and faithfulness. But Gareth, looking up into the quiet, loving eyes that were fixed on him, knelt down at the King's feet and bowed his head, and knew that nothing he could do for the King would ever be too much.

The King ended Gareth's kitchen service and made him a knight, and some day you will read other stories about him, for he fought many battles and loved a beautiful lady.

And it seems likely that the King loved him all the more because he could cook and scour for his sake.

BROTHER JUNIPER'S COOKING

Have you heard stories about Saint Francis of Assisi? There are a great many, and people like to hear them over and over again. For, though Saint Francis lived most of his life in a little, faraway, country town in Italy, called Assisi, and though he died hundreds of years ago, yet every year many people go to see the place where he lived, and the church where he is buried, and many people in countries far away from Italy love him as well as they do their friends whom they can see and talk to.

One of the stories about St. Francis tells of a flock of birds that came to listen to a sermon he preached to them, and another is about a wolf whom he persuaded not to hurt people any more. The reason he could do these things, and the reason people who have never seen him love him very dearly is because he loved everything and everybody in the world, and God and our Lord Jesus more than all.

No one was so dirty, or so sick, that he did not want to take care of him; no one was so cross, or so cruel, that he did not want to be kind to him.

Every day he went about helping poor people, and sick people, and troubled people; and he taught them all to be sorry for the wrong things they had done, and to sing songs of joy because God loved them.

After a little, a good many men began to help him do this. They gave everything they had to the poor, and never after that kept any money. They worked every day to get a little food, and the rest of the time they spent in helping and teaching people. St. Francis called them his "Little Brothers," not because they were small or young, but because he taught them to think themselves of no importance, and to think, if anybody scolded them or hurt them, that they deserved it and more too.

One of these Little Brothers was named Brother Juniper. He was always thinking of ways to help people. One day, all the Brothers went out to work, and left Brother Juniper to take care of the little hut where they lived, and to get some food for them. When he set about this he began to think of the Brothers who usually did the cooking, and how much time they had to spend every day getting food ready for the others to eat. To be sure, they had but one good meal a day, yet even so the cooking of it took time the Brothers might otherwise have used for prayer, or tending the sick, or some other good work.

As Brother Juniper was thinking of this, a plan popped into his head which made him very glad. He took two big baskets, and went off happily to several farmhouses in the neighbourhood, where the people were fond of the Little Brothers and liked to give them anything they needed. That day they gave Brother Juniper chickens and eggs and meat and salad and all sorts of vegetables, and they lent him some big iron pots. He took the baskets home heavy with food, and he came back and took the pots home. Then he made a big fire, and all the time he was happy and sang to himself, because he thought, "I will work hard to-day, and cook all this food, and then the Brothers won't have to think about cooking for a week or more." He hung the pots over the fire, and put into them all the food he had gathered without so much as taking the feathers off the chickens or the shells off the eggs, or stopping to see whether the vegetables were all just fit to eat or not. Then he filled the pots with water, and before long they began to boil. The fire was furiously hot. Brother Juniper could not get near enough to it to stir the pots. When he found this out, he took a board and tied it fast to himself, and, with that for a shield, he leaped to a pot and stirred it, and then leaped away again to cool himself; then he dashed at another and stirred that, and so on.

By and by, the Brothers came back, and the Brother Guardian with them, and they all sat down to dinner. Brother Juniper poured out some of the stew from his pots and brought it to the table. He was hot and tired, but delighted, and he told the others what he had done, and that they need not do any more cooking for a long time. The Brothers looked at him, and looked at the stew, and looked at each other, but not a mouthful could they eat. Brother Juniper urged them to begin, and when they did not, wondered what could be the matter. He was not left long in doubt, for the Brother Guardian told him that the dinner was not fit for a pig to eat, and scolded him well for wasting so much good food.

Brother Juniper listened and the gladness died out of him. He went and knelt at the Brother Guardian's feet and confessed his fault, and begged to be forgiven for wasting the Brothers' food, and for getting them a dinner they could not eat. Then he went away by himself, and the rest of that day and all the next, he neither ate nor spoke, nor ventured to come near any of the Brothers, because he was so sorry for his wastefulness and stupidity.

But the Brothers and the Brother Guardian thought they would be willing to know as little about cooking as Brother Juniper if they could be like him in some other ways.

THE WIDOW'S CRUSE

Long, long ago, there was a famine in a little town called Sarepta. For months and months there had been no rain, and nothing could grow in the fields, and the streams dried up and the sheep died and many people died, too, because they had no food.

A widow lived in Sarepta, who had one boy, and she was poor. When the famine began she had just one barrel of meal and one cruse of oil, and because she knew she could get no more, she and her son ate as little as they could, but even so, in a few months the meal was far down in the bottom of the barrel, and the cruse of oil felt very light.

At last one morning, when the woman got up, she found there was only enough meal and oil to make one little cake. She looked at it a long time, thinking they must certainly starve to death when that was gone; then she went out to get some wood for the fire, for she said to herself, "I will bake this one cake and we will eat it, but after that we will have to die." I expect she looked white and sad as she went, for it hurts very much to be so hungry that you die of it.

She found a few sticks, and was picking them up, when a tall old man stopped beside her and leaned on his staff. His clothes were made of hairy skins, and he had a long gray beard, and his face and arms and legs were brown and rough as if he had lived out in the sun and the frost. He seemed to have been making a journey, and he asked for a drink of water. The widow was glad it was only water that he wanted, and was hurrying off to get it, when the old man called after her, and asked her to bring him a piece of bread.

She thought of the little bit of meal and oil, and of her hungry boy, and of how hungry she was herself—and now, here was this tired old man asking for food! It was really more than she could bear. She came back toward him and said, "As the Lord liveth, I have not a cake, but only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and behold I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die!"

The old man saw how hungry and desperate she looked; it may be that he knew beforehand that she was; nevertheless, he said: "Fear not; but go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after that make for thee and thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth."

The widow did not altogether understand what he said, but somehow she felt stronger and more brave. She went home quickly and baked a little meal cake, and brought it to the old man, and asked him to come to her house and rest. He went back with her, and then she set about baking the rest of the meal and oil. She thought it would only make a very little cake, but the more meal she took out of the barrel, the more there was in it; and the more oil she poured from the cruse, the heavier it was to lift. She could hardly believe it, and yet she saw it was surely so. Then she went, crying with gladness and relief, and knelt beside the old man and thanked him, and begged him to stay with them as long as he could. And he did stay, a good many months, and all the time of the famine there was meal in the barrel and oil in the cruse.

By and by, the widow and her son learned that the old man's name was Elijah, and that he was a Prophet of the Lord God of Israel.

THE LUNCHEON

If we sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and then sailed as far east on the Mediterranean Sea as we could, we should come to Asia. Then if we travelled into Asia for a little distance, we should come to a small lake. Long ago, this lake was called the Sea of Galilee, and one of the little towns on the shore was named Bethsaida. In this town, almost one thousand, nine hundred years ago, a boy lived and played and went to school. His uncles had boats on the lake, for they were fishermen, and the boy played in the boats, and sometimes his Uncle Andrew let him go out with him to the fishing.

Bethsaida was a busy, little town. There was always something to do. The lake and the boats and the fishermen and the nets were always there; then sometimes Roman soldiers marched into the town, and merchants from far-off countries came to trade in the market-place. Now and again men came who gathered crowds round them, and talked loud and shook their clenched fists and tore their long robes and kept the town restless for days together.

The boy liked to go with his uncles to listen to these men. He could not understand what they were talking about, but the crowd buzzed and jostled, and sometimes groaned and yelled. It was very exciting. Uncle Peter was often angry about what he heard these men say, but Uncle Andrew just stroked his beard and went back to the boats.

The people called a man who spoke to them in this way a "Rabbi." This meant in their language, a master—a man who knew a great deal about something.

One day, a Rabbi came to Bethsaida, who acted differently from the others. He did not make speeches in the market-place, and often when people were crowding to hear him, he went away on the lake or into the hills. If they followed him, he would sometimes stand in a boat by the shore, or on a hillside, and talk to them; and he could make sick people well. He liked children; and the boy had seen him once stop in the road and talk to a woman. That was a very queer thing for a great Rabbi to do.

The boy saw very little of his uncles after this new Rabbi came, for they followed him everywhere he went and seemed to be his close friends. When they did come home they spoke of him as if they did not know just what to say, yet always it seemed as if they could have said more if they had thought it well.

One day, the Rabbi and his friends had gone up into the hills, and people from the towns on the lake, and from the country round it, had gone out to find him; for those who had seen him wanted nothing so much as to see him again, and those who had not seen him could not rest until they had found out what the others went to see. The boy had been playing in the boats that morning, which nowadays were most of the time pulled up on the shore, and when he saw some of the neighbours setting off for the hills, he made up his mind to go too. First, though, he thought, "Uncle Andrew will be hungry, and so shall I," and he went home and got some food to take with him.

The way up through the hills was long and steep. The boy and his neighbours were tired enough before they came in sight of a great crowd of people in a green hollow of the hills. It was strange but, though there were thousands of people all standing together, they did not make a sound. As the boy came a little nearer, he heard the Rabbi's voice in the stillness. He wondered why the people kept so quiet. He did not realize that he was keeping very quiet himself.

After a while he no longer heard the Rabbi's voice, and the people began to move and make a little murmur of talking. He crept through the crowd toward the group round the Rabbi where his Uncle Andrew would be. When he got there he found they were trying to think of a way to feed all these hundreds of people who were tired and hungry, and miles away from any place where they could get food. That reminded him of the luncheon he had brought, and he pushed the basket into Uncle Andrew's hand.

Uncle Andrew looked into the basket and smiled when he saw what it had in it. Then he said to the Rabbi, "There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?" All the same, though, he held out the basket to the Rabbi, as if he really thought it would be of some use to him.

The boy looked to see if the great Rabbi would be angry with Uncle Andrew for saying such a useless thing, when all the others were trying hard to think what could be done. But no; instead of that, he looked as if something had made him delightfully happy, and he said, "Make the men sit down." And they did. Then the Rabbi blessed the five little loaves and the two little fishes which he had taken out of the basket, and began to break them up and give them to those especial friends of his who were always with him. And they carried them to the people sitting on the grass, and came back for more again and again.

And there always was more.

The boy went with Uncle Andrew, back and forth, again and again. He wanted, more than anything, to help in some little way, if it were only to hold back his uncle's robe as he bent toward the people on the ground.

When they would walk back for more food, he scarcely dared go so near to the wonderful Rabbi. And yet—his heart was in his throat with the joy and wonder of it—was it not his own barley bread and fish that the Rabbi had been so glad to have, and with which he was feeding all these thousands of hungry people?

Last of all, after every one was fed, the boy sat down close to his uncle and they had some luncheon, too; but he could not take his eyes from the Rabbi's face. He looked and looked until he could not see it any more, for he had gone to sleep in the warm grass.

When he waked the crowd was moving away, and his uncle was helping gather up the food which was left. The Rabbi had gone away alone into the hills.

THE FIRE OF COALS

It was spring-time, and eventide, in the thirty-third year of that amazing time when God walked on the earth, not only everywhere, and in every man as He does now, but Himself in the form of one Man.

Five of those men who loved Him best, and had been with Him most often, stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the quick-coming darkness. Only a week or two before, they had seen their dear Lord nailed on a cross and left to die. And He had died. And when that happened, they felt they could not bear to live any longer. But—what do you think?—first one, and then another, had seen Him alive again, had talked with Him, touched Him, and been taught by Him as they used to be. When He was with them, they wished for nothing else; and when He was away they watched and longed for His return.

It had now been several days since He had been with them, and meanwhile they had been going about among people who thought of them as men who had wasted three years wandering round after another man, who was always about to do something but never did, and who, at last, had been put to death by the government. I expect it made these men feel lonely then, just as it makes us feel lonely now, to have to be with people who think that Our Lord is not alive.

They did not know what to do with themselves as they stood on the shore that evening. So, when one said, "I go a-fishing," all the rest said they would go, too. They were glad to be at work again, at something they had done all their lives.

They started out on the dark water under the stars, and cast their nets, but when they drew them in, they had caught nothing. They cast them again, and rowed here and there, and worked as hard as they could, but they got no fish for their pains, and the night was passing. One cannot tell whether or not they thought it strange, that men who had made sick people well, and cast out devils, could not now catch a few fish. Whatever they thought, they were wet and tired, and hungry, and the cold, gray early morning had come.

When it began to dawn, they rowed toward the shore. As they drew near, they saw some one standing on the beach who called to them and asked if they had any fish. They had to say no. Then the Stranger said "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." They had cast it, perhaps, in that very place during the night, but they did not say so; they just cast the net. When they began to draw it, it was heavy with fish.

This was a strange thing. One of the men said very low, "It is the Lord." Then the one who had suggested that they go fishing, threw himself into the water and swam to the shore; he just could not wait. The others came in the boat, dragging the net full of fishes.

As all through the night everything had seemed to go wrong, so now, everything was all right. On the shore was just the thing that tired, hungry, cold people want—a fire, burned down to glowing coals, with fish and bread baking on it.

But that was not the best thing they found on the shore.

The Stranger told them to draw up the net, and they did, and counted the fish, one hundred and fifty-three. Then He told them to come and eat, and He said grace for them and waited on them, and they knew every word and every gesture, but they could not speak. They just ate and rested and looked at Him. It made them so glad, and yet it almost made them afraid, too, that He should care about their hard work, and come and cook for them and wait on them Himself.

Perhaps it often happened in the years which followed, that when a friend, or a woman, or a slave came to these men, bringing food and comfort for their weariness, that with them came also the memory of the dawn on the beach, and the fire of coals, and the blessing of a Presence more than theirs.