Then the Fairy touched the flower with her wand, and she sprang from her stalk, with two gauze-like wings to bear her up. She looked now something like the butterfly, only even more beautiful. The two friends flew away together over the fields, and the Fairy returned to Fairyland, feeling very happy because she had been able to please the little flower. _E. Dyke._ [Illustration] THE STUCK UP RABBIT. THERE was once a little yellowy-brown rabbit, who was so proud that there was no bearing him. He ran away from home and went to live with some strange rabbits. “I have a right to be proud,” he said, “because my parents are Belgian hares.” But he looked so exactly like the other rabbits that no one believed him, and they turned him out for boasting. So he went to live in the cucumber-frame, and as the gardener did not notice him he had rather a good time of it. But presently the cucumbers were all over, and then the gardener shut up the frame and went away. And then the bunny grew hungrier and hungrier, and he cried aloud, but no one would help him. “It serves him right for being so proud,” said the other rabbits. But his mother, who lived quite on the other side of the field, heard him cry, and she came jumping on to the cucumber-frame with such a bounce that she broke the glass and tumbled in. “Come home this minute,” she said. “I’ll teach you to run away from home.” As she took him past the strange rabbits they all called out: “Hullo, Stuck-up, where are you off to?” “He’s going home to his father and mother,” said Mrs. Bunny. “But he said his father and mother were Belgian hares.” “Belgian fiddlesticks!” said his mother. “I’ll teach him to be ashamed of his family!” So she took him home by the ear. He’s quite a different bunny now, and works hard to support his old father and mother, as all good rabbits should. _E. Nesbit._ APRIL SHOWERS. TOMMY was a terrible tease, and poor little Mamie came in for most of the teasing. Tommy wasn’t really an unkind little boy, but he was very thoughtless, and very often he led Mamie into all sorts of scrapes. One day he persuaded her to play at Indians with him; he screwed up her hair into tight knots, made her shut her eyes and then blacked her face. When the little girl looked in the mirror over the mantelpiece and saw how ugly she was, she ran out of the room, meaning to go to Nurse to be washed clean again; but Tommy ran after her, and, just as she was passing the drawing-room door, he gave her a push, and in she went, right into the middle of a group of ladies who were visiting her Mamma. Oh! how angry Mamma was, for she thought Mamie had done it on purpose.