Pages for Laughing Eyes | Page 7

Mariah Anniah you shall not have even a taste of this sweet pie!"
"My name is'nt 'Ria Sannia' 'Ou're a bad boy. 'Ou call me names. 'Ou won't div me any pie! 'Ou eat it all alone!"
"Well, now, this is too bad. Not a knife in any of my pockets! Happen to have a jack-knife with you, Georgie?"
"No, I haven't any knife."
"What, a big boy like you and no jack-knife?"
"I'd like one, but folks say I'm too little to have one yet. But I'm going to save all my candy money now and buy one for myself."
"Very well, no knife, no pie! It's getting late and I must be going along. It'll take me some time to get there for I must walk slowly so as not to spill a drop of this juicy pie. Good bye."
Saying this, Tom walked away with the pie.
Just then a loud and angry voice was heard shouting, "Where's that pie?" The stout cook came rushing upon the scene, shaking her dish cloth and rolling pin in the air. "Who's got that pie?" she screamed as she ran around and around and back again to the same bench where she had placed the pie to cool. What was her surprise, then, to see the very same pie just where she had left it!
"Oh it's that bad boy, Tom Sommers, who has been playing this trick on me!" she shouted, in a loud voice. "Just let me catch him!"

THE YOUNG LAMB.
One day when brother John came home from market he brought a baby lamb for Maude.
"I thought you'd like this little playmate, sister, you seem to be alone so much. This baby doesn't know how to nibble grass yet and you'll have to get mamma to show you how to bring him up."
[Illustration]
Maude was delighted with her present. Her mother took a baby's nurse-bottle and filled it with sweet new milk and in a very short time Lambkin could take, through the rubber tube, all the milk his kind friends would give him.
Maude and her pet made a pretty picture playing together in the meadow.
Nora, who worked in the kitchen, used to sing an odd little song, some of the words being,
"Little lamb, little lamb, Will you leave your old dam And sit with me by the nursery fire? You shall have bread and milk, And a cushion of silk, And a cradle as soft as a lamb could desire.
"No! no, little child I'd rather run wild And play all the day by the side of my dam; For we love one another Like you and your mother And she'd cry all the day for the loss of her lamb."

TROTTY'S LESSON.
"Now try to learn this, Trotty. Of course, you're little and don't know much, but when folks ask you how old your brother is you can just say 'a whole hand old!'"
[Illustration]
"What for buver?"
"Well, it's because I'm just five years old! You won't have to learn to count yet, but you take a short path and say 'a whole hand old!' Now will you do it?"
"I will try!"

RUTH.
"Company coming to-morrow and not a crumb of cake in the house!" said Mrs. Brown one morning. "Jane's gone and there's all the sweeping to do, the baby to take care of, and three meals a day to get!"
[Illustration]
"Mother, mother dear," called Ruth from the next room, "do let me make the cake. I should like nothing better. It would be great fun."
"Great fun! Now that is what one says who knows nothing about it. It would be better to go without any cake at all than to place before our friends some that they cannot eat," replied the tired mother.
"When I was at Aunt Fanny's," said Ruth, "she taught me how to make a kind of cake that we all liked. Uncle John said he could eat all I could make. Do let me try, mother dear."
"Oh, Ruth, what a tease you are. Well, it will keep you quiet for a while and I suppose you must learn somehow."
Then Ruth ran into the kitchen in high glee. First she looked at the fire in the stove as Aunt Fanny had taught her to do. More coal was needed. So she had to go down cellar and bring up as much as she could in the hod. She opened the draughts and put on a little coal at first. When that had kindled she put on a little more. She took a whisk and swept out the stove oven. Then she put more water into the kettle on on top of the stove. Soon it was time to close the draughts. She put her hand into the oven to feel how hot it was just as she had seen her Aunt Fanny do.
[Illustration]
When the stove was as she wanted it,