t lessons, and more too. There was no escaping
school-time; it was as bad as Miss Bolton. Except that she was
Felicia--and that made all the difference in the world. Kirk labored
for her as he had never done for Miss Bolton, who had been wont to say,
"If only he would _work_--" The unfinished sentence always implied
untold possibilities for Kirk.

But Felicia was not content that Kirk could read the hardest lessons
now. They plunged into oral arithmetic and geography and history, to
which last he would listen indefinitely while Phil read aloud. And
Felicia, whose ambition was unbounded,--as, fortunately, his own
was,--turned her attention to the question of writing. He could write
Braille, with a punch and a Braille slate,--yes, indeed!--but who of the
seeing world could read it when he had done? And he had no conception of
our printed letters; they might as well have been Chinese symbols. He
would some day have a typewriter, of course, but that was impossible
now. Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the blind never could
write satisfactorily, sent for the simplest of the appliances which make
it possible for them to write ordinary characters, and she and Kirk set
to work with a will.

On the whole, those were very happy mornings. For the schoolroom was in
the orchard--the orchard, just beginning to sift scented petals over
the lesson papers; beginning to be astir with the boom of bees, and the
fluttering journeys of those busy householders, the robins. The high,
soft grass made the most comfortable of school benches; an upturned box
served excellently for a desk; and here Kirk struggled with the elusive,
unseen shapes of A. B. C.--and conquered them! His first completed
manuscript was a letter to his mother, and Phil, looking at it, thought
all the toil worth while. The letter had taken long, but Felicia had not
helped him with it.

DEAR MOTHER

I AM WRITING THIS M
YSELF A ROBIN IS SINGI
NG NEARME BECAUSE HE H
AS THREE EGGS WHICH FI
L FOUND YESTERDAY. I H
OPE YOU AREBETTER DEAR
AND CAN COME BACK SOON
YOUR KIRK XXXXXXXXXXXX

Mrs. Sturgis's feelings, on reading this production, may be imagined.
She wept a little, being still not herself, and found heart, for the
first time, to notice that a robin was singing outside her own window.
There is no question but that Kirk's days were really the busiest of
the Sturgis family's. For no sooner did the Three R's loose their hold
on him at noon, than the Maestro