Little Undine saw nothing of her mother and father during the first months of her life. She never went outside the bay, but rippled up and down in front of a large cave, diving under the ruddy golden seaweed to look at the quiet sea anemones. They were wonderful fellows, she thought. Even the youngest of them could sit still for hours. You never saw sea anemones fidgeting about, and as for turning head over heels, they do not even think of it. But Undine was a restless young thing, full of life and spirits, never still for a moment; and the sea anemones loved her, for she was always gentle and kind to them. Ah! those were happy times! The old waves like to go voyaging about and to see something of the wide world, so they are sensible enough to pack their children off to school as soon as they are born. The ripples have a class to themselves. They are taught to walk in rows, and each one learns to keep his place. You cannot teach a ripple much more than that, but that is something. There was a wave school in the bay in which Undine lived. The Zephyr taught the ripple class. They went every morning at sunrise, and had drill in a pool behind the rocks. It was a pretty sight. The sea anemones, red and white, opened out on the rocks to look on, lazy star-fishes stretched themselves upon the sands and laughed when the little ripples tried to move them higher up the beach, even those snarly little periwinkles peeped out of their black shells to see what was going on, and the old hermit crab, grumbling all the while at being roused up so early, sat at the door of his shell, and beat time to the marching with one of his claws. "One, two, three, four," said the gentle Zephyr. "Heads up! Keep your place! Let the little ripples have plenty of room. Now, Undine, dear, throw your shadow well forward." When the morning drill was done, the Zephyr used to say to the ripples, "Now you shall have a holiday; go and play together. Love one another. Be as good as you can. Be kind to all the world, and you will be happy." Then she kissed them all lightly, and flew away across the yellow sand and the heather-covered rocks, and they saw her no more until next morning. But they could hear her singing on the cliff one of those songs about the waves she loved so well, and when the chorus came they would join in, for she had taught it to them in the class, and it went this way: Oh, children may be naughty And monkeys may be bad, Young fishes, too, will often do What makes their teacher sad. Did we expect them to behave, We should expect too much, But a ripple is a little wave And should behave as such, Yes, must behave as such. Ah! the Zephyr was a kind teacher, and took such pains with the little ripples in her class, that in a week they were ready to go into the Upper School.