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 his return, confronting the horned monsters with unruffled tranquillity.

Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!" he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table.

"Can you draw?" he asked.

"No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance.

"How would you like to have me learn you?"

"I'd like it."

"Well; I'll learn you O first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round O in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly.

"Now I've learned O," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."

"Well, there's an I; see, there?"

"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.

"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted,