"Do not feel badly, dear Polly," whispered the mother, "and do not look now for any more bad records of yourself; but fill the rest of the spool with good words and good deeds, and in the end your record will be rewritten, made bright and clear." She then picked the girl up and held her to her breast, kissing her tenderly. At this moment Polly heard the disks ring out: "Polly!" and she cried, "Goodie! Goodie!" It was her mother calling her for breakfast. Polly sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Oh, mamma--where is the mother witch? Where is Harry?" Her mother looked puzzled at first, but she quickly realized that her little daughter had been dreaming. "I'll be the mother witch, my dear," she said, "and we will find Harry some day soon." MR. ROOSTER IN a certain back yard lives a colony of most interesting chickens. You could not imagine that feathered things would perform such capers as they do. One fine morning, after Mrs. Black Hen had spent a restless night on the roost, she addressed Mrs. Brown Hen with these words: "Do you know, Brownie, my husband snores, and I did not sleep a wink last night!" "Just to think of that! A snoring husband is a dreadful thing," Brownie returned. Brownie cackled all day from group to group about the snoring husband. The gossip grew as the day advanced till all the hens were cackling and exchanging winks and the rooster, thinking that the hens were laying an unusual number of eggs, crowed with great zest. This amused the hens very much, for, without knowing it, the rooster was making fun of himself. He would have been extremely angry had he known the truth. The poor hens cackled themselves into fits over the thing. It was so funny! The cook of the house to which the back yard belonged at once thought that the poor creatures had "the gapes." Now the gapes is nearly always fatal, but sometimes death may be averted by an application of red pepper. No wonder the cook was mistaken, for by this time the hens were rolling, kicking and cackling. The rooster was sitting on the fence almost shouting his head off. But when the cook ran out of the house and dosed every hen with Cayenne pepper, the surprised chickens sprang to their feet and rushed about madly. All the fun was gone. Some of them leaned against the coop and gasped for breath, while others rushed for the watering trough. During the performance, the rooster flew to the highest place possible and screamed with delight, for he had at last gotten through his thick head that the joke had been on him, but was now on his wives. Oh, but the hens were mad! That evening they crept to bed with tears in their little red eyes and vengeance in their small hearts. It had been agreed to watch the old fellow and see if it was true that he was a snorer. Not a hen slept that night. All went as usual till about eleven o'clock, when suddenly the rooster opened his mouth and screamed, "Cock-a-doodle-doooo!"