Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/189

Rh and health add to it. They were simply and forever perfectly beautiful. One looked from them to the shining, yellow curls, and then back from the yellow curls to the brown eyes, in almost incredulity of the wonderful combination. Each day we feared to see the golden hue change on the sunny head; but it never changed, never!

It soon became our habit to take Ally with us on all our rambles. She was as nimble and as tireless as a squirrel, and so full of joy in all things she saw that she was a perpetual delight to us. She ran between us, holding a hand of each; she ran before us, her golden curls reaching far back on the wind she lagged behind, hiding mischievously behind a tree or rock, and laughing loud like an infant to hear us call her. Sometimes we clasped our hands together and carried her proudly aloft higher than our heads, and holding on clingingly to each neck. When we put her down, she always kissed Jim, saying: "Thank you, brother Jim," and then, turning to me: "Thank you, too, Mr. Will; would you like to have me kiss you?"

One day I said to her, as we were sitting under a tree: "Ally, you always kiss Jim without asking him. How do you know he likes it? Why don't you kiss me without asking me?"

"Why, he is my brother," she said instantly; "he wants me to kiss him always," and she sprang up with a wonderfully agile spring which he had taught her, and lit on his shoulder, where she sat