“Did you ever hear about Miss Snarly?”

“Who is she?” asks my little girl, who was attentively listening.

Her real name is Mary Alice Alton, but she doesn’t get called by it very often. When she is good and pleasant and sweet, her mamma and grandma call her Birdie or Sunbeam, but when she is naughty, she is called Miss Snarly; and this name suits her very well at such times.

One morning she came downstairs looking like Miss. Snarly. Just as soon as her mamma looked at her she knew it was Miss Snarly, but she smiled, and said, “Good-morning, dear. How do you do this bright day?”

Mary put her finger in her mouth. “I dess I’ve dot a headache,” she said.

“Have you? I’m very sorry,” said mamma. “Where does it ache?”

“Way round de back of it,” snarled Mary.

“I guess you slept too long,” said her mother.

She did not love anybody this morning; even the baby she snarled at, and wouldn’t put on its shoes and stockings, and was cross to brother Joe. She wished her mother would speak to her; but she didn’t. She was singing to the baby, and seemed very happy. Usually she liked to hear her mother sing, but now she wished she wouldn’t look so happy when she was so miserable. The more she thought about it the worse she felt. She began to cry softly, but her mother took no notice.

Pretty soon she said, “Oh, dear! I wish I tould have the nosebleed, or somefin, so somebody’d care.”

“People don’t care much for Miss Snarly, anyway,” said her mother. “I should like to be rid of her myself, so she would stay away forever and let me keep my little girl all the time.”

“Should you pull her ear, and tell her to leave?” asked Mary.

“Yes, or I could spank her. I think it would be better to spank her.”

Mary thought it over. She and Miss Snarly had a little fight all by themselves by the stove. In a little while her mother felt two soft arms around her neck, and two sweet kisses on her cheek.

“Why, here’s my little rosebud again!” said she, looking down at the bright little face close to her own.

“Miss Snarly’s gone,” said Mary, “and she isn’t ever’n ever coming back again.”

Who is Little Sunshine?

The child who does not pout, nor frown, nor say cross words, but goes about the house laughing, smiling, singing, saying kind words, and doing kind deeds,--that child is Little Sunshine.