BABY DICK’S PORTRAIT.

It was a glad day for little Ivy when she heard that her
father and mother, whom she had not seen for five years,
"were coming home from India, and with them the dear
little baby brother Dick, of whom she had heard so much
but had never seen. Ivy could just remember her parents,
as she was four years old when she was sent home to England
to live with a kind aunt and be brought up in a climate more
suited to children than the hot Indian one. In the letters
that had come from her father and mother Ivy had heard
much of her little brother, and amongst the things which
she valued most dearly was a portrait she had been sent of
little Dick seated in a big chair, with a lovely basket of
flowers beside him. She had often looked at this, and longed
for the time when she would have her little brother to play
with, and so no wonder she was pleased when one day Aunt
Polly read out from the letter she had just received the
news that the steamer had started, and that the travellers
would reach home soon. Ivy went out to tell Barham, the
gardener, who had known her father since he was a baby,

the good news, and Barham was as pleased as she was.