Aunt Judy had finished at last, and she took off the old spectacles and laid them on the doll’s table, and paused.

“It is a good rule,” observed No. 4, “and I shall go by it, and not tell real Cook Stories when I grow up, I hope.”

“I love old Cooky,” cried No. 6, getting up and hugging her round the neck; “but is it wrong, Aunt Judy, to tell funny make-believe Cook Stories, like ours?”

“Not at all, No. 6,” replied Aunt Judy.  “My private belief is, that if you tell funny make-believe Cook Stories while you’re little, you will be ashamed of telling stupid real ones when you’re grown up.”

RABBITS’ TAILS.

“Death and its two-fold aspect! wintry—­one,
Cold, sullen, blank, from hope and joy shut out;
The other, which the ray divine hath touch’d,
Replete with vivid promise, bright as spring.” 
Wordsworth.

“Well then; but you must remember that I have been ill, and cannot be expected to invent anything very entertaining.”

“Oh, we do remember, indeed, Aunt Judy; we have been so miserable,” was the answer; and the speaker added, shoving her little chair close up to her sister’s:-

“I said if you were not to get better, I shouldn’t want to get better either.”

“Hush, hush, No. 6!” exclaimed Aunt Judy, quite startled by the expression; “it was not right to say or think that.”

“I couldn’t help it,” persisted No. 6.  “We couldn’t do without you, I’m sure.”

“We can do without anything which God chooses to take away,” was Aunt Judy’s very serious answer.

“But I didn’t want to do without,” murmured No. 6, with her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Dear No. 6, I know,” replied Aunt Judy, kindly; “but that is just what you must try not to feel.”

“I can’t help feeling it,” reiterated No. 6, still looking down.

“You have not tried, or thought about it yet,” suggested her sister; “but do think.  Think what poor ignorant infants we all are in the hands of God, not knowing what is either good or bad for us; and then you will see how glad and thankful you ought to be, to be chosen for by somebody wiser than yourself.  We must always be contented with God’s choice about whatever happens.”

No. 6 still looked down, as if she were studying the pattern of the rug, but she saw nothing of it, for her eyes were swimming over with the tears that had filled into them, and at last she said:-

“I could, perhaps, about some things, but only not that about you.  Aunt Judy, you know what I mean.”

Aunt Judy leant back in her chair.  “Only not that.”  It was, as she knew, the cry of the universal world, although it broke now from the lips of a child.  And it was painful, though touching, to feel herself the treasure that could not be parted with.

So there was a silence of some minutes, during which the hand of the little sister lay in that of the elder one.