the fall. The soft maple, another species, is very bright when the leaves
are changing, but it gives no sugar."

"Then I will not let it grow in my garden, nurse!"

"It is good for other purposes, my dear. The settlers use the bark for
dyeing wool; and a jet black ink can be made from it, by boiling down the
bark with a bit of copperas, in an iron vessel; so you see it is useful.
The bright red flowers of this tree look very pretty in the spring; it
grows best by the water-side, and some call it 'the swamp maple.'"

This was all Mrs. Frazer could tell Lady Mary about the maple-trees. Many
little girls, as young as the Governor's daughter, would have thought it
very dull to listen to what her nurse had to say about plants and trees;
but Lady Mary would put aside her dolls and toys, to stand beside her to
ask questions, and listen to her answers; the more she heard, the more she
desired to hear, about these things. "The hearing ear, and the seeing eye,
are two things that are never satisfied," saith the wise king Solomon.

Lady Mary was delighted with the contents of her Indian basket, and spent
the rest of her play-hours in looking at the various articles it
contained, and asking her nurse questions about the materials of which
they were made. Some of the bark boxes were lined with paper, but the
doll's cradle was not, and Lady Mary perceived that the inside of it was
very rough, caused by the hard ends of the quills with which it was
ornamented. At first, she could not think how the squaws worked with the
quills, as they could not possibly thread them through the eye of a
needle; but her nurse told her that when they want to work any pattern in
birch-bark, they trace it with some sharp-pointed instrument, such as a
nail, or bodkin, or even a sharp thorn; with which they pierce holes close