The Wilsons are comfortable and happy now. Bessie is Mrs. Philip Moore; the mother has doctors and luxuries; Robbie is at school and learning fast; Katie, _our_ Katie, is learning fast also, but she is still the same Katie as of old; she did not have to sell bunches of leaves another season; but there are always great bouquets of the beauties in the house, and old Mr. Moore, "hard" no longer, calls her nothing but his little "Autumn leaf." [Illustration: {BIRDS ON A TWIG.}] THE SPINNING LESSON. MRS. S. J. BRIGHAM. You will not mind, if I sit me down And watch you spin, in your velvet gown? You need not fear, You can trust me here. I think I can learn to spin, if I Could watch you work. Will you let me try? You spin and weave, but I cannot see Just how 'tis done, and it puzzles me. For you have no loom In your little room. No silken skein, no spinning-wheel, No bobbin and no winding reel. Please tell me what you use instead? And where do you hide your shining thread, As soft as silk And as white as milk? I think, Mrs. Spider, it must be A secret, or you would answer me. [Illustration: TREED.] [Illustration: FOSTER PARENTS.] FOSTER PARENTS. Strolling down back of the barn, and seeing a fluttering of wings near the ground, Fred and John discovered, upon coming closer, that a poor little bird had fallen from its nest in the bough of a tree that stood near them. The bird was young, too young to fly, and seemed more dead than alive from the fall. The boys took the bird, fondly caressed it, stroked its feathers, and were glad to see that it showed signs of life and that it was only stunned by the fall it had received. The boys were kind-hearted, they were boys full of life, the first-most in a race, in climbing a hill they among the first who stood on its top. Yet in all their sports they were never cruel. So with the bird, they only thought of how to care for it. The tree was too tall to climb with safety, and then they were forbidden to climb this tree because John had once ventured to the first of its branches and by some accident, such as will happen to boys, he lost his hold and tumbled to the ground and he still remembered the days of pain it caused. Said Fred, "Why can we not take the bird home and care for it?" So, with this suggestion, they brought it to the house and placed it in a small basket. The basket was one they used to carry their dinners to school in, and, of course, this could not be used to keep it in all the time. John said, "It will be best to make a cage for it. We can, with our knives, soon whittle out sticks for bars and with the saw and some boards make a cage." They labored on this for two days, and then, with Uncle Ben's help, for he could drive nails better than they, the cage was completed. Some cotton was shaped into a nest and the bird was placed in it and the cage was its home.