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 It was a mighty pretty little oak desk, with a lid that closed up and locked, and I knew at a glance that it would be just fun to make new pigeon-holes for it,—and Bess and I jumped at the bargain, quick.

I couldn't go to work at it until after Christmas, for I had to put in all of my spare time at the store through the Holiday season; but when that was over, I went down to the furniture shop for three Saturdays and worked on it; and when it was finished, no one would ever have guessed but that it was perfectly fresh from the factory.

I thought a good deal while I was working on it, too,—about how queer it was that I should be giving all this time to fixing something for that other girl,—when I had made up my mind to hate her. And that made me think of some Chinese characters that I had seen explained; how certain marks meant certain things, and then they were grouped together to mean other ideas; and the marks which went to make up the word "hatred," meant, when separated, "crookedness of the heart." And crookedness in people is deformity, and every one dreads and turns away from deformity. It seemed queer to think