They had no feathers on, and they had long, ugly necks and big feet. “I don’t like ’em,” said Johnny. The little goslings grew fast. They had a nice farmyard to live in, and a little brook to paddle in. At night the farmer shut them up in the barn, so that the cats and dogs could not eat them up. In a few days they were all covered with pretty feathers. Then Johnny liked them. By and by the little goslings were old enough to go with their father and mother and aunts and uncles to swim in a big lake. That made them very, very happy. Then they grew to be big geese, and wore a lot of feathers, and Johnny had a pillow, which he enjoyed very much, made from the soft down that grew on their white breasts. MRS. C. M. LIVINGSTON. WHO WAS TO BLAME? “NOW you see, Emeline Frances,” said Celia, pushing herself up among the pillows and speaking in slow, stern tones to the dollie lying on her arm, “it is really your fault, and no other person’s; if you hadn’t been bound and determined to go out this afternoon, why, we shouldn’t have gone, that’s all. It had been raining, of course it had, and the walks were all damp, and you had no rubbers to wear over these shoes. Besides all that, you had been told that you must not go out this afternoon; but you were so vain of your new dress and hat, and so anxious to show them to Lulu Parks, that you would insist on going, and making me get my feet wet. Now here we are! A whole hour yet before it will be dark, and just a lovely time to play, and company downstairs in the parlor, and just the kind of cake for tea that I like the best, and we have to come upstairs and go to bed! I hope you are satisfied, Emeline Frances, with your afternoon’s work. I shouldn’t have thought of going out if you hadn’t have been so crazy to show your new hat. It is just a pity that you think so much of fine clothes. The dampness took the curl all out of your new feather, and it will never be so pretty again; but you had your own way, and will have to take the consequences. The worst of it is that you make me suffer with you. If this were the first time you had disobeyed perhaps I shouldn’t feel so badly, but as it is, I am almost discouraged. I do not see how you can be so naughty and forgetful.” The lecture closed with one of Celia’s longest sighs. The door which led from her room to her brother Stuart’s was ajar, and he, sitting at his desk supposed to be studying his Latin for the next day, listened with the most unqualified amusement to the whole of it. He repeated the story downstairs at the tea-table, amid bursts of laughter from the entire family, his mother excepted. “Mamma looks as grave as a judge over it,” Stuart said at last, when the laugh had subsided. “What’s the matter, mamma? Don’t you think the poor baby’s version of her troubles is funny?” [Illustration: CELIA TALKS TO EMELINE FRANCES.]