you will know better when you become acquainted with her, and learn how
strong she is, and how active; how she can really be in fifty places at
once, taking care of a sick tree, or a baby flower just born; and, at
the same time, building underground palaces, guiding the steps of little
travellers setting out on long journeys, and sweeping, dusting, and
arranging her great house,--the earth. And all the while, in the midst
of her patient and never-ending work, she will tell us the most charming
and marvellous stories of ages ago when she was young, or of the
treasures that lie hidden in the most distant and secret closets of her
palace; just such stories as you all like so well to hear your mother
tell when you gather round her in the twilight.

A few of these stories which she has told to me, I am about to tell you,
beginning with this one.

I know a little Scotch girl: she lives among the Highlands. Her home is
hardly more than a hut; her food, broth and bread. Her father keeps
sheep on the hillsides; and, instead of wearing a coat, wraps himself in
his plaid, for protection from the cold winds that drive before them
great clouds of mist and snow among the mountains.

As for Jeanie herself (you must be careful to spell her name with an ea,
for that is Scotch fashion), her yellow hair is bound about with a
little snood; her face is browned by exposure to the weather; and her
hands are hardened by work, for she helps her mother to cook and sew, to
spin and weave.

One treasure little Jeanie has which many a lady would be proud to wear.
It is a necklace of amber beads,--"lamour beads," old Elsie calls them;
that is the name they went by when she was young.