“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Let’s all carry a pocket dictionary and we can be smart and sharp, too,” laughed some one.
“Dear me!” cried the Clove Doll. “Did I really say smart? I mis-spoke. I am sharp. I mean stinging to the tongue.”
Before she could say another word she was surrounded and tested so vigorously by the many tongues, she shrieked indignantly:
“Stop! we don’t lick the ladder till the ice cream is done. Now let me finish.
“My buds turn green, then red and hard. Then we are laid near the smoke of a wood fire in the sun to dry. We don’t like that smudge and are glad enough when we turn brown, then we know we are finished. I might say developed,” she added, with a triumphant glance at her hearers.
DANCE OF THE ELVES
“The last night there in the woods we had a grand time. We looked like a lot of elves dancing in the red glow shed by the fire.
“I’ll never forget what happened that night. We had just finished a weird dance and were huddled together watching the sparks mount to the sky, when there appeared in our midst a queer little Being, who seemed to spring from the fire.
“She seated herself in our midst and told us the grandest stories I ever heard!”