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THE TANSY CAKE.

(An Easter-tide sketch of life in Old England.)

T was Easter Monday in quaint old Chester, three hundred years and more

ago. The morning sunshine lay warm and cosy among the small spring

foliage that tried to shade the garden bench on which Phoebe sat swinging her
toes, beneath her long, quaint gown, for want of something better to do.

A Phoebe-bird seemed calling, “Phoebe! Phoebe!” from the branches
above, and she turned her head, in its prim little cap, to see where the small
songster had hidden himself.

There was a merry laugh, and a dapper boy emerged from a stiff-cropped
box-tree.

Phoebe pouted. “So the Phoebe-bird be only you,” she said.

“Tt be only I,” he replied, with a mockingly deferential bow; “was not the
imitation a right good one? Mother has sent me to say you shall come and help
her with the tansy cake ; her fingers are so colored with the egg-dye that she
will give you all the ne to do.”

“O, goody!” said Phoebe; “I shall like that. You are a good boy, Robin,
and shall have a big slice.”

““T want it all,” he said.

“No, indeed, Sir Stingy;” and she courtesied with mock ceremony to him.

“ Then listen to my song,” and he parodied, slightly, a rhyme of the day :

‘« At stool-ball, Phoebe, let us play,
For sugar, cakes and wine.

Or for a tansy let us play,
The loss be thine or mine.