"How can I," said Marian, "live without my brother? Without him there is no play; I can not be happy away from him. Without him I care for nothing; every thing is tedious; I can not bear it any longer."
The truth is, they could not be happy away from each other, so they entreated their Mamma to allow them to be together again, as it was impossible for them to live separately.
"So it is," said their mother, "with your young Doves. They came from the same nest, they have been nourished and fed together, they are accustomed to live with one another, and they feel it, as you yourselves do, a painful thing to be parted, and will soon die of grief."
At these words both the children started, and ran and released the prisoners. Out flew the doves, rejoicing in their liberty, and caressed each other with their beaks. They seemed by their cooing to thank those who had released them. They soon became as healthy as before, and their feathers also became as white as ever. Marian and Henry resolved never to separate them again, but to attend them as they did at first; and the two cages were taken away.
"My dear children," said their good mother to them, pressing them to her bosom; "you have now learned that the ties of relationship bind faster than chains; they give the greatest joy to our hearts, they are our greatest happiness; may you long love one another and be happy; forget not, that in the palace or in the humble cottage, in the busy world, or the more retired life, the tongue speaks nothing more pleasing, and the ear hears nothing more sweet, than the endearing names—Brother and Sister; even with the oldest people, it gives joy to remember when they lisped those words."
THE ANT-HOUSES.
Robert gave his cousin Richard, for a birth-day present, a nightingale, in a beautiful green cage, and told him to feed it with meal-worms and ants' eggs. The miller or the baker would supply him with the meal-worms, but the ants' eggs he would be pretty sure to find in his father's garden. He would only have to put a flower-pot, or a little wooden tub, in some dry sunny place, and the ants would find their way under the hedge, and lay their eggs there; for they are always careful to put them where the rain can not come.
Richard bought some meal-worms, but they cost almost all his pocket-money; and he must set about finding the ants' eggs, which would cost him nothing. So he did as Robert had told him, and, to his great delight, he found when he took up the flower-pot, on the next day, that a whole colony of ants had crept under it; for the earth was thrown up into little heaps, and looked fine, as if it had been sifted. Some little ants were trotting about quickly, as if they were trying to find out what had happened to make it so suddenly light.
Richard took a stick, and stirred the earth a little, and found a great many little, long white eggs lying about. He stretched out his hand to put the eggs into a little cup which he had brought with him, when, to his great amazement, the little ants caught up the eggs in their mouths, and ran away with them.
When Richard saw the kind motherly care of the ants, the tears came into his eyes, and he said, "No, I can not be so cruel as to trouble all these little creatures just to make one happy; and my little nightingale would like much better to sing in the cool green trees than in his close prison of a cage. I will go and let him fly where he pleases."