“Lie down, sir,” said the apple-man crossly; “you came here to do nothing and I’m going to see that you do it.” [Illustration] “I am doing something anyhow,” said Tommy suddenly. “I’m sitting down.” “All right,” said the apple-man; “we’ll soon settle that;” and a strong hook suddenly caught Tommy by the back of his clothes and hung him up in the air. “Now you are not doing anything, anyway,” said the little man; “the hook is doing the work.” Imagine being hung up by a hook just out of reach of everything, while long processions of little green men came and offered you all the things you wanted most in the world—cricket-bats and ferrets, paint-boxes and hard-bake, guinea-pigs, catapults, and white mice, marbles, buns, and sheaves of letters with valuable foreign stamps on them. Tommy cried with rage, but the little apple-man only laughed, and kept saying: “How do you like doing nothing, eh!—jolly, isn’t it?” Then he saw his Mother coming along the path, and to his horror he saw that a leopard was slinking after her. He called aloud, but she did not hear. “Oh, let me go and drive the leopard away,” he cried to the little green man; “it will eat my Mammy—I know it will. Oh, Mammy, Mammy!” but she did not hear, and the little man said: “Oh, nonsense! if you haven’t got the pluck to master a simple addition sum, you can’t master a leopard, you know”; but Tommy struggled so hard that the hook gave way and he fell with a bounce on the orchard grass. He rushed off to find his Mother. To his delight she was safe, and there was no leopard about in the house or garden. He threw his arms round her neck. “Mammy,” he said, “I do love you so. I’ll learn everything and do everything you tell me.” “Ah!” thought his Mother, “the fresh air has done him good.” But it was not the fresh air; it was the little apple-man. _E. Nesbit._ GREEDY TODDLES. TODDLES was a greedy boy. If ever he had a cake or and orange, he would go away by himself to eat it, so that he might not have to give any away. He was a _very_ greedy boy. One day he sat on the fence at the end of his mother’s garden eating a slice of bread-and-butter, and an old crow flew down from a tree close by and looked at the food longingly. “I’m hungry,” said the crow, for Toddles lived in the land where birds can talk. “Give me a few crumbs of your bread.”