Broce - THE LAND OF PLUCK

call how Rover looked, exactly —he has been dead these
dozen years, poor fellow!

The lather must have been precisely right, for I know it
worked beautifully. Such bubbles as I blew that morning!
What colors they displayed! How lightly they sailed up
into the clear air! Sometimes a little one with a bead at

the end—a failure

 

 

would fall upon Rover’s nose and
burst so quickly that I could n’t tell whether its bursting
made him blink or his blinking made it burst. Sometimes
a big one would float off in the sunlight and slowly settle
upon the soft grass, where it would rock for an instant, then
snap silently out of sight, leaving only a glistening drop
behind. And sometimes — but here I must begin afresh.

The little girl who lived next door very soon came and
leaned her bright head out of the window. A bubble had
just started at the end of my pipe. I did n’t look up; but
T knew she was watching me, and so I blew and blew just
as gently and steadily as I could, and the bubble grew big-
ger, bigger, bigger, until at last it almost touched my nose.
Then it let go; and looking up at it, I saw in the beautiful
ball first the blue sky, then perfect little apple-tree bran-
ches, then I saw the house, then the open window and the
little girl!

This made me shout with joy. I called out, but the
little girl was gone. Probably she had bobbed her head
back into the room. It was just like little girls to do so,
you know. Then I blew others, and knew she was watch-
ing me again; and, all of a sudden, Mother called me.

Well, I cannot remember much more about that sum-
mer. It seems to me that there were peaches, and that