LITTLE COUSIN RANNA.
BY MRS. LUCY MORSE.
"Will and Almida Handly were rather sorry when they learned that their little cousin Marianne Joy was coming to make them a long visit.
"She won't know a bumble-bee from a butternut," said Will. "City children don't know anything, and she'll be awfully in the way. Won't she tag after you and me, though, Almy?"
"Oh dear!" said Almy, in a complaining tone; "we'll have to keep her every speck of washing and baking days."
"I wish they'd leave her where she belongs," said Will.
The children were silent awhile, and then Almy heaved a sigh, and said: "I s'pose that's just the trouble, Will. If her mother has—has died, where does she belong? Where would you and I—"
"I know it," exclaimed Will, gruffly. "Come on, if you want me to help fix up your old baby-house for her."
The day after Marianne came the children's feelings were altered. Walking down the lane all together, the little cousin was dazzled by buttercups, and ran hither and thither gathering them in such wild delight that she came upon Dowsabell, the cow, unexpectedly. Dowsy only raised her sleepy nose from the grass to sniff at the buttercups, but Marianne dropped the whole bunch, with a cry of terror, and ran like the wind to Will for protection. She flung herself upon him with such a pretty confidence that Will took her right into his big boyish heart, and wished on the spot that Dowsy was a raging lion, or, to say the least, Neighbor Stethaway's cross bull.