. Let me go on."

It was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this visit to Tom. She was
allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and in time got
very deep into the examples in the Latin Grammar.

Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best of
terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling,
as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do
Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what ABC
meant--they were the names of the lines.

"I'm sure you couldn't do it, now," said Tom, "and I'll just ask Mr.
Stelling if you could."

"I don't mind," said she. "I'll ask him myself."

"Mr. Stelling," she said, that same evening when they were in the
drawing-room, "couldn't I do Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if you were
to teach me instead of him?"

"No, you couldn't," said Tom indignantly. "Girls can't do Euclid--can
they, sir?"

"They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say," said Mr.
Stelling; "but they couldn't go far into anything. They're quick and
shallow."

Tom, delighted with this, wagged his head at Maggie behind Mr.
Stelling's chair. As for Maggie, she had hardly ever been so angry.
She had been so proud to be called "quick" all her little life, and now
it appeared that this quickness showed what a poor creature she was.
It would have been better to be slow, like Tom.

"Ha, ha, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, when they were alone; "you see it's
not such a fine thing to be quick. You'll never go far into anything,
you know."

And Maggie had no spirit for a retort.

But when she was fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the study was
once more quite lonely for Tom, he missed her grievously.

Still, the dreary half-year did come to an end at last. How glad Tom
was to see the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold wind! The
dark afternoons, and the first December snow, seemed to him far
livelier than the August sunshine; and that he might make himself the
surer about the flight of the days that were carrying him homeward, he
stuck twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden, when he was
three weeks from the holidays, and pulled one up every day with a great
wrench, throwing it to a distance.

But it was worth buying, even at the heavy price of the Latin
Grammar--the happiness of seeing the bright light in the parlour at
home as the gig passed over the snow-covered bridge--the happiness of
passing from the co