BROKEN.
"ARE N'T they just lovely?" Estelle Brownson held the quaint, dark blue cream pitcher aloft, to show how transparent it was.
"Oh, they are too pretty for anything!" declared Frances Holmes, her dear friend, and she wound her arm caressingly around a dark blue plate as she spoke. "I don't believe another girl can bring such a charming array of old things as you can.
How came your grandmother to let you take them?"
"I'm sure I don't know; I didn't expect it, she thinks so much of them.
Grandpa bought them, you know, when they first commenced house-keeping, sixty years ago. Just think, Frances, of having been a housekeeper for sixty years! I was telling mamma about the old folks' supper, how we were going to have all the nice, oldfashioned things we could get for the table; and I was complaining that our things were so distressingly new, when grandma said, 'I suppose you would like the blue china tea-set to dress your table with.' I gave a little scream, and said I guessed I would better than anything in the world, and when she said I might take it, I gave her such a hugging it nearly took her breath away. I would not have one of the pieces broken for anything. I am afraid it would break grandma's heart. I shut Tiny up in the nursery for fear she would break something."
[But somebody had let Tiny out of the nursery.]
"O Stella!" she said, as she came within hearing, " mamma says I may go to the supper, and she will dress me up in white pantalets, and a long-sleeved, high-necked, white apron, just as little girls used to dress years ago. Won't I look too funny?" And the happy little girl whirled on one foot and came up with a thud against her sister just as she was turning to set the cream pitcher down. Down it went on the hard floor, and of course it broke into I don't know how many pieces. Poor little Tiny! How suddenly the happy light went from her eyes, and her face grew pale. But Estelle did not see it; all she saw was the cream pitcher in hopeless ruins. "You naughty, careless, wicked girl!" she exclaimed, her voice hoarse with anger; “you hit my arm on purpose; I know you did! You are a perfect little nuisance! Always in the way; the idea of your bunting up against me in that manner. You ought to be whipped severely, and I'll tell mother so; see if I don't. Come into the house this minute!" And she seized the arm of her frightened little sister, and dragged her up the steps and through the hall in frantic haste. It was hours after that, in the cool of the afternoon, that Estelle knocked softly at the door of grandmother's room, then slipped in and sat down in a sorrowful little heap at her feet. "O grandma!" she said," have they told you? I'm so awfully sorry!
I could cry for a week if that would only mend it."
"So am I, child," said grandma, knitting away quietly on her stocking;
"I would cry, too, if that would do any good; but tears will not mend them; there were so many of them broken, too; that seems to make it worse."
Then Estelle lifted her sorrowful face. "O grandma!" she said, "there was only one broken; that was bad enough; did you think there were more?"
Grandma gravely shook her white old head. "You are mistaken," she said; "there was more than one, child; I was in the sitting-room at the time, and heard the crash. Let me see, 'Bear ye one another's burdens;' that was broken, I'm sure; poor little Tiny had to bear her own heavy burden. Then, 'Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another;' I'm afraid that was dreadfully broken. Oh, there were a good many of them; I felt them rattling about my ears all the morning."
"Not another word," said Estelle. For ten whole minutes she buried her head in grandmother's apron; then grandmother said softly, "Take them
to Him, child, and try again."
The Pansy