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"Oh, please do, Carl, it hurts so!" she said, laying her little round hand in the big, strong, horny palm that had held the life-line the night of the wreck. The song-sparrow clung to the swaying top of a mullein-stalk near by, and poured out a strong, swelling, joyous song that well-nigh split its throat.

By daylight she seemed somewhat sleepy and tired; and was withal so tiny, that he might almost have taken her between his thumb and finger, and twirled her above his head; yet she poised herself before him on a mullein-stalk, and looked every inch a queen. Robin found her gaze oppressive; for her eyes were hard and cold and gray, as if they had been little orbs of granite.

Lord bless me, I ain't no great I ain't nobody I'm jest an old last-year's mullein-stalk in the Lord's vineyard; but that 'ere blessed little thing allers had a good word for me. She gave me a hymn-book and marked some hymns in it, and read 'em to me herself, and her voice was jest as sweet as the sea of a warm evening.

When I said that patience had had her perfect work, it was my intention to unfold in short, stinging sentences my plans as to future dealings with the delinquent. The singing on the other side of the room meant no more than the chirping of a grasshopper upon a mullein-stalk.

"Now, one can understand one so tall as I having to stand upright and do my duty; but you, why, you are no taller than one of my green pods that I am filling with floss " "And not half so tall as one of my leaves that I must line with velvet," interrupted the mullein-stalk again. The dandelions looked grieved for a moment, but answered brightly: "Why, don't you know?

And so did Susy, for she thought she had had a dull season of it, and fully agreed with Prudy, who spoke of it as the "slow winter." But now it was the quick spring, the live spring. The brooks began to gossip; the birds poured out their hearts in song, and the dumb trees expressed their joy in leaves. "The bobolink, on the mullein-stalk, Would rattle away like a sweet girl's talk."

McGuffey had a Speller, too. It began with simple words in common use, like a-b ab, and e-b eb, and i-b, ib, proceeding by gradual, if not by easy stages to honorificatudinibility and disproportionableness, with a department at the back devoted to twisters like phthisic, and mullein-stalk, and diphtheria, and gneiss.

If it was not our duty to stand up, we would like nothing better than to sink down in the shade and go to sleep; but we must attend to our task and keep awake." "What can you have, you wee things, to keep you busy?" asked the tall milkweed that grew near the fence-rails; and the mullein-stalk beside it echoed, "What, indeed?"

The weather changes, and it is not till a number of days that you hear the note again, or, maybe, see the bird darting from a stake in the fence, or flitting from one mullein-stalk to another. Its notes now become daily more frequent; the birds multiply; they sing less in the air and more when at rest; and their music is louder and more continuous, but less sweet and plaintive.

She herself had not known, that, for the month past, since James came from sea, she had been living in an enchanted land, that Newport harbor, and every rock and stone, and every mat of yellow seaweed on the shore, that the two-mile road between the cottage and the white house of Zebedee Marvyn, every mullein-stalk, every juniper-tree, had all had a light and a charm which were suddenly gone.