A curious thing about it is, that when the little yellow flower falls, the pod does not continue to grow and ripen in the open air as bean pods and pea pods do. Instead of that, the stalks which bear the pods turn downward, growing longer and longer, until they reach the ground and push their pods below the surface to ripen. If by any accident they fail to get into the earth, they never ripen.

Isn't this a strange way for a plant to act?

Perhaps you think it deserves a place in the circus with other queer things from different parts of the world.

The boys seem to think so. "Peanuts! Peanuts! Fresh-roasted peanuts, only five cents a pint!"

HER LITTLE SISTER POLLY

PART I

"Now good-by, Polly, good-by. I am going off on the bayou in the oyster boat with Lola Vance, and I expect to be gone all day, so I want you to

be real good; now don't screech or squawk, or scream, or make any noise and wake up Aunt Letty. And don't you go into the house and pull all the stuffing out of the furniture, or chew the piano legs, or bite holes in the carpet, or eat the buttons off Aunt Letty's shoes, or do anything bad. Do Do you hear, Polly?"

These orders, half-entreating, half-commanding, came from a little girl about eight years old; she was standing on tiptoe before the high, swinging perch of a great, green parrot.

She was an odd little creature. Small as she was, she managed somehow to look too large for her clothes. Her brown and white polka dot dress was decidedly short, and too tight in the waist, with sleeves barely reaching to her elbows. Her brown hair was plaited in two tight little braids, and the front locks were drawn up through the brim of a flat, brown straw hat, and braided and twisted into a topknot for the purpose of keeping the hat in place. A pair of brown eyes looked out from a brown little face, and so, all together, she was a very brown little girl, indeed as brown

as Polly was green. But Polly had a yellow head and wings and tail tipped with the most brilliant and varied colors. She was a fine bird, and she knew it.

"Pretty Polly! Nice Polly! Good Polly!" said Polly, flapping her wings and turning and twisting her little head coaxingly toward the child, who reached up to imprint a kiss on her curved and glossy beak.

"Yes, Polly, I know you mean to be good," said Pixey, "but you see you forget, and you screech and squawk so sometimes that it gives Aunt Letty a headache, and she doesn't like you much, anyway. She went to a party last night over to the Vance's, and so she's sleeping late this morning, and we mustn't disturb her. We've got to be pretty good now or we'll be sent away, you and I, way up North,' to some place where they put little girls in strait-jackets, and they don't like Polly birds, and we don't know what might happen to us. It's an awful place. That's what auntie says. Anyway, we'd better keep quiet, for we don't want to go, do we?"