i6i 



More as a joke than anything else, he offered her 

 some of this and found that she ate it greedily. 



The next thing she condescended to eat was a 

 piece of rhubarb pie ; then some hard-boiled eggs. 

 These things seemed to complete the list of what 

 she would eat, until her owner shot a sparrow and 

 put it in her cage, and she finished it, — feathers, 

 bones, beak and all. 



After this she was fed almost entirely on spar- 

 rows, and soon she began to get fat again, for she 

 had grown very thin after she was first shut in het 

 cage. 



But, though Mother 'Possum grew fat and 

 hearty, her owner could never tame her. Even the 

 little ones were always as wild as when they had 

 first been lifted from the barrel, and whenever 

 any one came near, they would open their mouths 

 threateningly. 



They were too little and young, really, to be 

 able to bite, and the young man often took them 

 out and handled them, though they never grew 

 used to this. He would amuse himself by stretch- 

 ing a piece of rope across the room and hanging 

 all nine of the little 'possums along it in a row by 

 their tails. He would twist their little tails about 



Pyle's Humble Friends.— il. 



