18 RHODA.

‘The man in the moon laughed when he saw them lying asleep
together, and he gave an extra smile to the cornfield for
Rhoda’s sake. 7

Every week Rhoda would go to the cornfield for a new
Corn Silk, though it was always the same one to her. She
pretended that the shrivelled and wrinkled one, of the last
week, had taken a bath and changed her clothes. She would
always go down late Saturday evening and lay the discarded
ear of corn under a corn-stalk, and on Monday morning she
would go to a different stalk to get a fresh one.

But the day came when the corn was yellow, and the har-
vesters came to gather it in. So that was the end of it all for
poor Rhoda. She sobbed over the last ear she could play
with, and mournfully lay Corn Silk, for the last time, out in
the moonbeams. The man in the moon looked down at her,
still smiling, for he knew a secret, and a day or two after
Rhoda had a great surprise. A neighbor drove up to the gate
and handed her a box, which he said he had found at the
express-office for Miss Rhoda Converse. Rhoda could hardly
wait till she found her mother, and together they opened the
box, in which—oh, delight !—they found a lovely doll, dressed _
beautifully in a little silk dress just the color of green corn;
a bewitching little hat rested upon her wavy hair, which was
as soft as corn silk. Rhoda screamed with joy, while her
_ mother read from a card, “From Eunice Alden, with a loving
remembrance of Rhoda and Corn Silk.”