Augusta, young as she was, was an intent and interested spectator of the scene. She watched every look――marked every action――weighed every word. Her own time of being welcomed soon came, when the caresses of the grandmother were transferred from the daughter to the grand-daughter. She shuddered in the embrace――and her eyes, generally large and brilliant, rolled more widely and wildly; but she escaped the anticipated mastication, and at length breathed more at her ease! Augusta was delighted, as she bounded forth from the gate into the path that led back to her lodgings, and was as much inclined to expedite her return, as she had been slow and reluctant in going. Up to this time the intensity of her feelings was unknown, and even the nature of them was scarcely if at all suspected. But the secret was gradually developed, and at length the parents were able to explain many a circumstance and many a declaration in regard to Augusta’s change of feelings towards her grandmother, which, perhaps, with more consideration, they might have explained before, but which had been set down rather to the whim of the child than the unguarded expression of the mother. On reaching her quarters, a young lady, to whom the casual mention had been made that Augusta expected her grandmother would eat her up, said to her―― “Well, Miss Augusta, your grandmother, it seems, didn’t eat you up.” “No, she didn’t eat _me_,” said she, “but she tried to eat _mother_.” Some circumstance at the moment intervening, the conversation was interrupted, but on the following day, it was renewed by Augusta herself, who, approaching her mother, said: “Mother, what did grandma’ do to you yesterday?” “She kissed me, my dear.” “She didn’t kiss you mother――she _bit_ you.” “No, my daughter, you mistake, she did not bite me, but she kissed me affectionately.” “She _did_ bite you, mother――I’m sure, I saw her, and she made you cry.” “My daughter――why!” “You said, mother, one day when we were at home, that grandmother would eat _me_ up, but she tried to eat _you_.” The grandmother, as already intimated, had kissed her daughter fondly――with a mother’s ardor. Augusta saw her lips impressed on the mother’s cheek, and the tears starting fast, and rolling down; and she mistook the kiss for a bite, and thought those tears of joy were tears of pain. The whole mystery now vanished. “She will love you so much as to eat you up,” misconstrued, had been for weeks and months a sort of death-note sounding in the child’s imagination. This story, however improbable it may seem, is literally true, and may show how careful of early impressions, a parent should be. C. G. About the Chicadees, FOR MERRY’S MUSEUM.