"Can't you try?"

“No; I never could suppose anything," yawned Helen, staring with all her might at some visitor who had just entered in a new spring suit. Julia Calhoun came to the rescue.

"I think she'd be awfully scared, and I guess Herod was."

"Yes, indeed," Happy went on. "But he wasn't too scared to think : he knew a good deal, I suppose, about what to do in an emergency; he had been king long enough for that. The first thing to do was to find out all these wise men knew, and then he sent them off to find out more, and come back and tell him. How glad they must have been to see the star, when they got out of the city, going right before them to show the way."

"Do you suppose it was a real star?" asked Mary Gray, looking up suddenly.

Now Happy had been troubled in her own mind as to what she should do in case the scholars questioned her too deeply for her knowledge.

"What shall I do, mother?" she had said only the night before-" if the girls ask me something I don't know?"

"Tell them you don't know it, Happy. Truth is always better than guessing. There is a great deal in the Bible nobody understands; why should you expect to explain it all?”

So she simply answered Mary:

"I don't know. Whatever it was, it showed them the way. I think Mary must have been surprised to see these three old men come in to the door of the stall and give her baby such beautiful things, and fall down on their knees before him. I wonder what she thought; her head must have been full of ideas about the Holy Child."

"I thought it was shepherds came first to see him," said Julia.

"Yes, that is in another Gospel-in Luke."

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Why aren't they all alike?" said Mary Gray. "Because they were written by four different people: I don't think any two persons in the world seeing anything happen could tell about it just the same way, even if they saw it from the same place."

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Why not?" asked Addy Palmer, who happened to have been sharply reproved, a day or two before, by her school teacher, for misrepresenting something in school, and hoped to get a certain justification out of Miss Dodd's opinion.

"Because they are not made alike: some people don't notice or know half that goes on before their eyes, and some see every little thing."

"Then you don't believe it's a lie always if a person can't tell a thing just as it happened?" "Nothing is a lie that is not meant to deceive; if

you mean people to understand what you tell them to be true, when you know it is not true, that is a lie, whoever says it."

Addy Palmer's eyes dropped, and she said no more, and Happy went on.

"And now comes something that makes me think these wise men must have been told about Jesus Christ by God himself, and sent to see him, for the twelfth verse says: And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.' So you see Herod did not find out as much as he meant to. He did not know God was standing in his way; he did not think about God at all, probably. I think we will not go any further to-day in the chapter, but just stop here, and see what lessons there are to learn from these verses.

"One is that it is a good plan to go to the Bible for advice and teaching. Even Herod found this; for when he wanted to know about Christ he went to the Jewish priests, and they told him what the Bible said. If we always go to the Bible, we shall find some help or leading in every time of trouble or joy."

"About everything?" said Ruth, with a little trembling in her voice, and very wistful eyes.

“Yes, dear, about everything of real importance.”

dresses and bonnets!" said Julia, with a sort of sarcasm in her voice, as Addy Palmer, next her in the class, was gazing in an absorbed fashion at the Grangers, who had previously occupied Helen's attention.

"Yes, it does, something," answered Happy, smiling.

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Why, what?" exclaimed Helen and Addy in a breath.

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Suppose you all look and see what you can find in the Bible before next Sunday, about dress. You all have reference Bibles; take for the text first Timothy, second chapter, ninth verse."

Addy looked out the text directly, and showed it to Helen, who made a queer little face, thinking no one saw her. Miss Dodd did, but she went on.

"And another thing is to give all we can to God: our greatest treasures; the things we like best and think most of. The wise men brought gold and costly perfumes and gave them to the Holy Child to show their love and reverence; and if we love him we shall give him what we love best, and that is generally our own selves. These two teachings are enough, perhaps, to remember to-day. Now will you all tell me what you would have liked best to see, that we have read about?"

Happy did this with a half-conscious idea of making it a test question; and to some extent it served that

purpose: the girls hung back at first, and were shy; she had to press them a little.

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Suppose you speak in order: what would you have liked best?" looking at Adelaide Palmer.

"Oh! the treasures. I wonder what they were!" "That's just what I was wishing," said Helen Sands.

Julia Calhoun thought a moment.

"I'd have liked to see how Mary acted when the wise men came in."

And Ruth went on, all her face flushing with emotion:

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"O, Miss Dodd, I wish I could have seen the baby!"

Poor little Ruth! her tiny sisters both lay in the graveyard, but her loving heart kept them in sweet remembrance.

"I'd have chosen to see the wise men, and ask them about the star," said Mary Gray.

Just then the bell rang, for there had been much said not chronicled here, and they turned about to sing. The lesson was not after any very scientific or orderly fashion; it was the way Happy had been used to read the Bible and talk it over with her mother: simple enough, and akin to the "foolishness of preaching," but it had interested the children, and their criticisms on the new teacher were gentle,except that Addy Palmer sniffed at her dress, and