"Listen to the bobolinks, telling us 'tis May!"




[Illustration: Dot and The Lemons]

DOT AND THE LEMONS.


Dot's father is a funny man. One night, he brought home some lemons for
mamma,--twelve long, fat, yellow lemons, in a bag. Dot was sitting at
the piano with mamma when his father came in, and did not run, as usual,
to greet him with a kiss. So Dot's father opened the bag, and let the
lemons drop one by one, and roll all over the floor.

Then Dot looked around, and cried, "Lemons, lemons! Get down; Dot get
down!" And he ran and picked up the lemons one by one, and put them all
together in the great black arm-chair. As he picked them up, he counted
them: "One, two, three, five, six, seven, nine, ten!"

When Dot got tired of seeing them on the chair, he began to put them on
the floor again, one at a time, and all in one spot. While he was doing
this, his father stooped down, and when the little boy's back was
turned, took the lemons, slily from the spot where Dot was placing
them, and put them behind his own back,--some behind his right foot, and
some behind his left.

He took only a few of them at first, so that Dot should not miss them.
But, when Dot came to put the last lemon on the floor, he could not see