SHADOW BROOK.

AFTER THE STORY.

ELL, children,” inquired Eustace, who was
{| very fond of eliciting a definite opinion from
mAs) his auditors, “did you ever, in all your lives,
listen to a better story than this of ‘The Golden
Touch’ ?”

“Why, as to the story of King Midas,” said saucy
Primrose, “it was a famous one thousands of years be-
fore Mr. Eustace Bright came into the world, and will
continue to be so as long after he quits it. But some
people have what we may call ‘The Leaden Touch,’ and
make everything dull and heavy that they lay their fin-
gers upon.”

“You are a smart child, Primrose, to be not yet in
your teens,” said Eustace, taken rather aback by the
piquancy of her criticism. ‘ But you well know, in
your naughty little heart, that I have burnished the old
gold of Midas all over anew, and have made it shine as it
never shone before. And then that figure of Marygold!
Do you perceive no nice workmanship in that? And
how finely I have brought out and deepened the moral !