THE NEW SERVANT AT MERRYVALE.
AUTUMN LEAVES, AND WHAT KATIE DID.
ALEX DUKE BAILIE.
“Oh, Bessie! I’ve such an idea, such a good one, and so sure, you can’t think how it came either, if you guessed and tried for a week!”
“Child, you are always having ideas, but they amount to nothing; you have enough to do at home, without continually fretting your head about what you cannot carry out.”
“But, Bessie, this is just splendid, and it came to me all of a sudden, and I’m sure as sure can be that it is a real good idea. Now wont you listen!”
“I suppose I must, if I want any peace; but I’m very tired, so if it is like your latest—to catch fish and sell them in the town, or to have your curls cut off and let some city hair-dresser pay you for them—there will be no use to tell it to me.”
“Tain’t neither, Bessie dear, it’s a real clever idea, and I know you wont say ‘no’ to it. I was looking over some of the old picture papers this morning, and I found a funny picture of a gentleman that had gone fishing with, oh! the greatest lot of lines, and a fine rod, and a basket swung at his back, and he looked ever so nice; but he hadn’t caught any thing and he was ashamed to go back to the city with an empty basket; and then there was another picture where he was buying a great string of fish from a bare-footed little country boy, that had caught them all, and had only a rough old pole and an old line on it.”