



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Emmy and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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Libraries.)











A ROUND DOZEN.

[Illustration: TOINETTE AND THE ELVES.

Down on the ground beside her, a tiny figure became visible, so small
that Toinette had to kneel and stoop her head to see it.--PAGE 234.]




A ROUND DOZEN.

BY

SUSAN COOLIDGE,

          AUTHOR OF "THE NEW YEAR'S BARGAIN," "WHAT KATY DID," "WHAT KATY
          DID AT SCHOOL," "MISCHIEF'S THANKSGIVING," "NINE LITTLE
          GOSLINGS," "EYEBRIGHT," "CROSS-PATCH,"
          "A GUERNSEY LILY."

[Illustration: QUI LEGIT REQIT]

          BOSTON:
          ROBERTS BROTHERS.
          1892.




          _Copyright, 1883_,

          BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.

          UNIVERSITY PRESS:
          JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.




                             TO

                    V    V    V    V    V

          _Five little buds grouped round the parent stem,
           Growing in sweet airs, beneath gracious skies,
           Watched tenderly from sunrise to sunrise,
           Lest blight, or chill, or evil menace them._

          _Five small and folded buds, just here and there
           Giving a hint of what the bloom may be,
           When to reward the long close ministry
           The buds shall blossom into roses fair._

          _Soft dews fall on you, dears, soft breezes blow,
           The noons be tempered and the snows be kind,
           And gentle angels watch each stormy wind,
           And turn it from the garden where you grow._




CONTENTS.


                                                      PAGE
          THE LITTLE WHITE DOOR                9
          LITTLE KAREN AND HER BABY           34
          HELEN'S THANKSGIVING                47
          AT FIESOLE                          67
          QUEEN BLOSSOM                       93
          A SMALL BEGINNING                  115
          THE SECRET DOOR                    135
          THE TWO WISHES                     156
          BLUE AND PINK                      183
          A FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE             198
          TOINETTE AND THE ELVES             232
          JEAN'S MONEY, AND WHAT IT BOUGHT   259
          HOW THE STORKS CAME AND WENT       277




THE LITTLE WHITE DOOR.


I SUPPOSE that most boys and girls who go to school and study geography
know, by sight at least, the little patch of pale pink which is marked
on the map as "Switzerland." I suppose, too, that if I asked, "What can
you tell me about Switzerland?" a great many of them would cry out, "It
is a mountainous country, the Alps are there, Mont Blanc is there, the
highest land in Europe." All this is true; but I wonder if all of those
who know even so much have any idea what a beautiful country Switzerland
is? Not only are the mountains very high and very grand, but the valleys
which lie between are as green as emerald, and full of all sorts of wild
flowers; there are lakes of the loveliest blue, rivers which foam and
dash as merrily as rivers do in America, and the prettiest farmhouses in
the world,--_chalets_ the Swiss call them,--with steep roofs and hanging
balconies, and mottoes and quaint ornaments carved all over their
fronts. And the most peculiar and marvellous thing of all is the strange
nearness of the grass and herbage to the snows. High, high up in the
foldings of the great mountains on whose tops winter sits all the year
long, are lovely little valleys hidden away, where goats and sheep feed
by the side of glacier-fed streams; and the air is full of the tinkle of
their bells, and of the sweet smells of the mountain flowers. The water
of these streams has an odd color which no other waters have,--a sort of
milky blue-green, like an opal. Even on the hottest days a chilly air
plays over their surface, the breath, as it were, of the great
ice-fields above, from whose melting snows the streams are fed. And the
higher you climb, still greener grow the pastures and thicker the
blossoms, while the milk in the _chalet_ pans seems half cream, it is so
rich. Delicious milk it is, ice cold, and fragrant as if the animals
which produce it had fed on flowers. Oh, Switzerland is a wonderful land
indeed!

One day as I sat in a thicket of Alp roses in one of those lovely,
lonely upper valleys, I happened to raise my eyes, and noticed, high in
the cliff above, a tall narrow rock as white as snow, which looked