"Come, my poor dear children," said mamma, turning to the five little girls. "Don't cry, Bessie dear, or you either, Gussie. We'll get your frock mended in a minute, and Cara and Louie will give you a nice game of musical chairs in the drawing-room to cheer you up before you go home. There is some fruit waiting for you too."
She marshalled them all off, smiles and chatter soon replacing the tears and yawns. Mamma stopped at the doorway.
"Miss Lily Farquhar," she said, quietly, "you had best remain here and enjoy your book till you are sent for."
To Olive she said not one word. But it was a very humble and penitent little girl who came that evening to tell her mother and sisters how sorry she was, and how foolish and selfish and ungrateful she now saw that she had been.
If Olive ever gives another tea-party I think the first guests she invites will be her kind big sisters, Cara and Louie.
A LIVE DUMMY.
The Merediths were spending the autumn on the French coast, at a sea-bathing place called Sablons-sur-mer. It is a nice bright little place. I am afraid the inhabitants would be offended if they heard it called "little," for they think it a very important town! It consists of two long streets—one facing the sea, one inland, where the shops and the houses of the people who live there all the year round, are. And between these two streets run smaller ones—so small that they are more passage-ways than streets. The most imposing one is called an "arcade"; in it are the best shops, a bazaar of all sorts of fancy things to delight children's eyes, from tin buckets and spades to dig with in the sands, to rocking-horses, though not of a very expensive kind. At one corner of this arcade is a large, ready-made tailor's establishment; this shop, for reasons I will explain to you, divided the children's attention with the bazaar.
There were ever so many Merediths; three girls and two boys and a couple of cousins. The Sablons people are accustomed to English visitors, so the sight of this band of children was not startling to them; and the little messieurs, and the jeunes mees, soon had several friends in the place, whom they never passed without a friendly nod and a bon jour or bon soir, as the case might be.