F you please, all of you must be very careful to shut the garden-gate, as they go in and, out,' said Mr. Lisle. 'I have turned the pigs into the field, and I do not want them amongst my vegetables. They are not my style of gardener.'

"Very well, my dear,' said Mrs. Lisle,

'Geoffry,' said Mr. Lisle, 'mind you attend to what I have said; always shut the garden-gate.'

'All right, papa,' said Geoffry.

'By-the-bye,' said Mr. Lisle again, 'I lent you my fishing-rod yesterday, my boy, upon your promise of putting it back in its place. It is still in the lobby.'

'Oh, I forgot!' said Geoffry.

'Well, go at once, take it to pieces, and carry it upstairs. I am tired of this constant forgetting. A boy has no right to forget to keep his word.'

Mr. Lisle looked annoyed; and Geoffry coloured very red as he left the room. He walked to the lobby, and began to unfix the rod into pieces, when his younger brother called out-

'Geoff, I say! here are two of the young rabbits cutting about the garden, and they have eaten ever so many of the carnations. Somebody left the hutch open: it must have been you.'

Geoffry threw down the fishing-rod, and with it all remembrance of his father's order, and rushed out of the house. He and his brother Walter hunted the rabbits for more than half-an-hour all over the garden; and at the end of that time, when the little creatures were back again in their hutch, Geoffry only remembered his father's fishing-rod when he met little Archie coming towards him with a piece of it in his hand, which he was using as a whip. Geoffry then snatched it from Archie, that he might put the piece with the rest, but directly he took it in his hand he saw that it was broken.

Had Geoffry been like some boys he would have scolded the baby for touching the rod and breaking it; but he was not so unfair as that. He knew that it was the fault of no one but himself, and however wrong he