FATHER’S DINNER.
DA BURROWS lived with her

father and mother in one of the
pretty cottages of Laneton vil-
lage. She was a little girl with
brown eyes, rosy cheeks, and
light, wavy hair. She was a
good little girl, as little girls
go: she felt a shade of discon-
tent now and then, and her
small duties sometimes seemed
to her rather tiresome: but
these bad feelings were soon
over. ‘To-day she was busily tying up the mignonette
in the corner of the little garden which she called
her own, when she heard her mother call.

‘Ada!’ cried Mrs. Burrows, putting her head out
of a side-window of the kitchen, and which opened
towards the garden.

‘Yes, mother,’ Ada answered as she ran in, and
found her mother tying a cloth over a yellow and
black basin, covered with a soup-plate.

‘Here now, Ada,’ said her mother, ‘ you run
over to father with his dinner. Put your hand here
under the knots of the cloth. Here’s the cold tea.
Oh, dear! I forgot the dumpling! That’s a surprise
for father.’

Mrs. Burrows untied the bundle again, and,
going to the fireplace, she teturned with a splendid
apple-dumpling, which was added to ‘father’s dinner,’
and Ada started on her way. }

Her father was a gardener, but had not of late
been in regular employ at any one place. He was
now putting the garden at the Vicarage in order.
The vicar and his family were absent at the seaside,
or I dare say that Ada’s father would have had his
dinner in the kitchen. But they were expected
home in a day or two, and Burrows had plenty to do.
So he would not come home at noon for his dinner,
and his little daughter had to bring it to him.

The sun was high and hot, and the road dusty.
Ada had been working long in her garden, and she
was hot too. She was very hungry—much more
hungry, it seemed to her, since she had seen that
glorious dumpling than she was before. She walked
along the road, holding the dinner carefully by its
cloth, when who should she meet but Bessy Dixon!

Bessy was not half so pretty as Ada. She might,
however, have been prettier to look at than she was
now if she had tried, for a clean face is prettier than
a dirty one, any day. ‘Wherever are you going?’
said Bessy. »

‘Up to father with his dinner, said Ada, and
walked on. She answered quite civilly, but without
showing any strong desire for Bessy’s company, as
she knew that her mother did not wish them to be
friends, for Mrs. Burrows was a good and careful
mother.

‘All that way!’ said Bessy. (Ada thought that
it really was a good way to go, but said nothing.)
‘ What has he got for dinner?’ asked Bessy, putting
her face nearer the bundle, and sniffing.

‘ Beef and vegetables,’ answered Ada, ‘and bread;
and, oh! such a splendid apple-dumpling !’

 

 

‘ Apple-dumpling ?’ cried Bessy. And then, sink-
ing her voice, she added, ‘Oh, Ada! I am hungry,
and I do like apple-dumpling.’

Ada thought within her that both these state-
ments were extremely true about herself also; but
she said nothing about this. But she did say, ‘It’s
a surprise for father. Mother told me he didn’t
expect it.’

Bessy was walking on beside her. ‘Oh, Ada!’
she said in a low voice, ‘I just am hungry. Are
not you? I say, your father doesn’t know there’s
any apple-dumpling ?’

Here she hesitated, and looked wistfully in Ada’s
face. Ada was much more hungry than Bessy, who
indeed had had her dinner already; but she only
looked in Bessy’s face as if she could not understand

her.

‘I say,’ repeated Bessy, in an excited whisper,
‘he doesn’t know of it. He’d never miss it” Then
looking hard in Ada’s eyes, and touching her arm,
she whispered, ‘I say, let’s eat it. He won’t know.’

They had reached the corner of the quiet lane
leading from the high road to the gate of the
Vicarage garden. It was narrow and shady, and
very retired. High banks and thick hedges were on
each side, the boughs of the trees met overhead, the
sides were grassy; there was no sound but the

_ twitter of birds and sometimes the hum of a wan-

dering bee. Bessy had not ill chosen the scene of
her temptation.

‘The two girls had paused, and were standing at
the entrance of the lane, looking at each other; and
as Ada put her one disengaged hand to the bundle,
Bessy thought for a moment that she had prevailed.

But nothing was farther from Ada’s thoughts.
She was only changing hands for the safer carrying
of ‘father’s dinner.’ Not for one moment did the
idea of yielding to Bessy’s suggestion enter her
mind. Indeed, what Bessy wished was scarcely
plain to her for a moment. Then, as the baseness
of the temptation broke upon her, ‘Oh, Bessy !’ she
said: no more, but the tone was enough. ‘ Good-
bye!’ she hastily added, and ran up the lane to the
Vicarage gate, making the basin and soup-plate
rattle as she went, and arriving at the place where
her father was at work much hotter than if she had
not met Bessy Dixon.

When John Burrows, seated on his tilted wheel-
barrow, had finished his bread and meat, and had
begun upon his dumpling, his little daughter, who
was leaning on his knee, surprised him with a
chuckling laugh. He looked up, and saw her face

full of merriment, but a queer look in her brown

eyes.

‘What's the matter, little maid?’ he asked.

‘I was thinking, father,’ said Ada, ‘suppose I
had stopped on the way and eaten up your dinner,
what would you have said?’

‘I should have said, it was not my little maid that
did that,’ said John Burrows, as he put the last piece
of his dumpling with much content into his mouth.

There was a dumpling waiting at home for Ada
also, though I think it rather spoils the perfume of
the story to tell you so. J.K.L.

PBL 5