[Illustration: PART I.]
"MOTHER! from this moment, behold me, my own master!
Yes, madam, I am old enough. I mean just what I say."
[Illustration: PART II.]
AND, but for a sudden and unforeseen disaster,
The puppy might have kept his resolution to this day.
* * * * *
THE STICKLEBACK BELL-RINGERS
BY C. F. HOLDER.
A certain pond in the country was once peopled with a number of
turtles, frogs, and fishes which I came to consider my pets, and
which at last grew so tame that I fed them from my hands. Among them,
however, were four or five little sticklebacks that lived under the
shade of a big willow, and these were so quarrelsome that I generally
fed them apart from the rest. But sometimes all met, and then the
feast usually was ended by the death of a minnow. For, shocking to
say, whenever there was a dispute for the food, some one of the little
fishes was almost sure to be devoured by the hungry sticklebacks.
These stickleback-and-minnow combats, after a while, came to be of
daily occurrence, and the reason for this was a singular one, which I
must explain.
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