Mary had tears so thickly in her eyes, she bent her face that Scrap might not see them. The dear little face on the pillow was watching hers anxiously.
"It will be very soon, my darling."
Scrap moved about restlessly for a moment, tracing a pattern on the wall with one little finger. It grew tired so soon. When he turned his face again to Mary, he said, with his old quaint air, and jealously holding his little flag, "Won't I always be a truly 'Merikan, Molly?"
They re-assured him on this point, and he fell asleep quite comforted. The dear little Scrap! He scarcely spoke again. The next day's wintry dawn saw him in his last slumber. The little flag he had so treasured as the symbol of his native land was held so closely in his fingers that they would not move it. His little friends came in to see him for good-by, and Mary and Ben and Lewis talked of the day when he had first come to them, lying in that pink and white cradle over the sea. Would the room look the same ever again? Ben wondered. Lewis talked of how Scrap had loved the garden.
When they kissed him for the last time, and laid him to rest, the bit of color and the faded stars went with him. His dear little face wore its sweetest look. The flag was clasped on his bosom, and winter flowers were lying all about him.
[WAVE AND SAND.]
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
I have now told you something, at three different times, about the sea, the rocks, and the waves. You remember we looked at these things, and tried to learn something of the way in which the winds and waves have worked together to carve out the rocks and the dry land. There is nothing like seeing a thing for yourself, and those boys and girls who live near the eastern shore of the United States, between New York and Florida, can easily visit one of the strangest of the strange works done by the sea.
Along the whole south side of Long Island, beginning at Montauk, all along the Jersey shore, away down past Little Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, Cape Hatteras, and the low sandy shores of the Carolinas and Georgia, to the Florida Keys, is a most singular beach, built up by the sea. The odd thing about this thousand-mile beach is that it appears about to move away. It is continually walking along the coast, up or down, or forward and backward, as if restless and tired of staying in one place.