COUNTING A DAY'S SPORT. OM GILES is Farmer Giles’s son, and they live at an old farm-house at the end of a shady lane. Tom is a thoughtful boy, and Blackboard, the old school-master of our village, says he is a first-rate fellow at school; and I know the old housekeeper at the farm finds him very useful indeed. Everybody likes Tom Giles, from the ploughman that follows — his father’s team, to the magpie who calls out Tom! Tom! from the top of the barn door. At Mr. Blackboard’s school the boys have a holiday every Wednesday afternoon, and away they all scamper to the village green, kick up their heels as though the whole school had gone mad, and I'll warrant you that Tom Giles is as merry as any boy among them. One day they proposed to go fishing in the large pond at the end of the village green, and then there was such a lot of cut- ting fishing-rods, and making nets, and borrowing pickle-jars to put the fish in, that at last Farmer Giles declared that his best hedge was almost cut to pieces, and the old housekeeper said she had scarcely a jar left. But, after all, the day’s sport was soon over, and when Tom got home again he put his jar upon the kitchen table to count what he had caught. One, two, three, four little sticklebacks, bobbing about as though they were playing at hide-and-seek. One, two, three little efts were also there, looking very gloomy indeed ; perhaps they wanted to play at puss-in-the-corner, but as there are no corners in a round pickle-jar of course they could not do that. But you know I told you that Tom was a thoughtful boy, and — ashe looked at the little fish swimming about in the jar, he wondered whether they were happy, and whether there were any little baby fish left in the pond who were calling out for their papas and mammas that he had caught, or whether there 52: