ZOE'S LETTER.

"MY DEAR MAMMA:

"I am going to write you a letter. Do you miss me any? I had a good voyage, and Carl told me a great many funny stories. Does papa miss me any? Nanny is gone into the country to live at the captain's house with his two little girls. I like Miss Holberg-that is one of the teachers; she is very kind to me. I shall go and see Nanny in the summer; the captain said so. There is a very merry little girl in the room with me; her name is Hilda; I think she tries not to manage me, as Miss Holberg called it. She told me about the leaves coming all out on the trees in the spring. It is very cold here, and the air has a great many snows in it; that is, rain frozen up in the sky and coming down like feathers.

"FROM YOUR OWN ZOE.

"Ever so much love to papa and you."

Seeing Zoë closing her desk, Hilda got up and went to her.

"What a pretty little desk you have got! I wish I had one like it."

"You may use mine whenever you want to," said Zoë. "You are a dear, good little girl," said Hilda, “and I know I shall like you. We will say thou to each other, will we not?"

"What does that mean?"

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“O, when people love very much, they say thou, when they speak to each other, instead of you.”

Here Zoë's timidity and self-distrust came up, and she said, “I am afraid you will not like me so well as you think you will, and if you left off saying it, I should feel so bad; I had rather wait a little." "What an odd little thing," enough, she is different from me.

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thought Hilda; sure I think as Miss Holberg

said, I may as well let her do things her own way, and we will see what comes next."

Hilda's curiosity coming into play was a great saving to her fingers and lips, for she never afterwards had to bite or pinch them so hard in order to keep them in their proper places.

CHAPTER IV.

"Thou little child! yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height!
Why, with such earnest pains, dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."-WORDSWORTH.

ZOE soon became tolerably wonted to her new home. Shrinking and timid as she was, her first introduction into a school of forty girls was painful and awkward. Some stared and nudged their next neighbors to look at her; some smiled upon her as if to re-assure her; some said and did their prettiest things to draw forth her admiration; while the older ones either were, or affected to be too much absorbed in their occupations to observe her at all.

Hilda would very gladly have shown her off in schoolroom, parlor, and kitchen, had it not been for Miss

Holberg-either visible as she busied herself with the pupils, or invisible in the shape of her earnest rebuke, seconded by the shy manners of Zoë herself, which pleaded to be left in quietness and obscurity. Her childish lessons were easily learned, and she obtained her share of the little prizes awarded by Miss Ingemann to the best scholar in the different studies. In no way did she seem very unlike the other children either in study or play or in the little household occupations which her teacher, true northern woman as she was, required each in their turn to share; only that she seemed of a more indolent temperament than the Danish girls. This prompted her to retire from their active sports sooner than the others, and disinclined her to long and steady occupation; in fact, as was the plain speech of the school, she was rather "lazy."

"Come," Hilda would say to her, " put on your furs and hood and let's go skating. See how bright the sun shines. and what good sport the girls have! Ha! ha! there goes one down and another on the top of her! But what is that?"

"It is Rinda," said Zoë; "she said she was going to be the Snow Queen, that Mr. Andersen told us about. You see she has dug her a palace in that great drift—look at the icicles which she has hung from her curls, and she has got a snow-baby in her arms! U-g-h! It makes me shiver to see her," and she left the window and crouched down by the fire.

Hilda screamed with delight as she saw the Queen, with the light snow stuck to her lips and a long icicle for a scepter in her hand, run round to kiss her subjects, who shrunk from her cold embrace and chilly sway.

"Come, come, there 's rare fun there. I'll be the reindeer and upset her throne with my branching horns, and you, with your black eyes and dark skin, may be the little robber-maiden with the warm muff to warm our hands for That will suit you, won't it?"

us.

"Y-e-s," said Zoë, and not liking to disappoint her playmates, she suffered herself to be dragged out to the Snow Queen's palace, from which, however, she soon stole away half-frozen to build one in her own way, of feathery tamarind boughs and waving palm leaves, with a tropical sun. glistening through the shining leaves, and the blue and violet sea stretched out before her, while loving faces and gentle words filled up the scene and made its fitting music. "I wonder," said she to herself, "if our Father in Heaven, who mamma says, is our best friend and knows what is good for us, told my papa to send me away off to this cold country, where everything is so strange to me There is the sun; it shines bright enough, but it does not warm me much, and how naked the world looks here' Hilda says, that it is prettier in the summer, and she tells me the truth about things, I know, so I believe her. 1 am sure I shall be glad to walk into the new summerworld, when it comes. Doesn't God love the white people as well as he does us, that he gives them snow and ice and such cold weather? But what a good warm fire this is! How it crackles and blazes! I must move my seat back, for it is too warm. O, now I know, God gives them plenty of wood, so as to make a sun for themselves when his grows cold. Isn't he kind to think of it? and Hilda likes snow and says she has the best fun in winter. So I suppose, it is all right; I must take my furs off too. How soft they are! O yes! and God gives them too, as well as the great woodfires-I mean the animals they grow on. Yes, they seem well taken care of; but I can't help wondering whether he meant that I should come; but I've got to stay here now, so I may as well be contented," and she drew a long sigh. "Have you got your lesson in geography?" said Hilda, as Zoë sat listless, one morning, with her books in her lap.

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Yes," said Zoë, "I've learned the words, but I don't understand nor care about parallels of latitude and longitude, and exactly the spot where people live. If I only