“It is easy to guess,” said Polly, with a good-natured smile, “why the lady chose your cottage for the home of the baby.”
Johnny, after two or three vain attempts, had succeeded in clambering up the bench on which Minnie was seated. She now felt his little arms pressed round her neck, as he drew her down towards him to whisper close in her ear, “Everybody happy with my Minnie Wings.”
And now, nothing remains but that A. L. O. E. should bid her young readers farewell. If they have liked her little book, let them remember that her story is but as the comb, which may be pleasant to the eye, but that its moral is the honey which is treasured within. However young, however weak, dear children, you may be, know that the youngest, the weakest, have some power here to give either pleasure or pain. A generous spirit shrinks from inflicting suffering on the smallest insect or the feeblest worm; and I trust that no reader of my little tale will hesitate which part to take for his own, or leave it doubtful whether he ought to be classed under the title of Wings or Stings.
·FINIS·
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Naturalists doubt whether the violet-bee is a native of Britain. It is known that one species of carpenter-bee is to be found in England, but the one described above probably belongs to foreign lands.