them for a little, and ask their
mother if she might have them to teach on Sunday. But this boy, ignorant
and neglected as he seemed to be, had certainly a manly dignity which
made Grace's invitations more difficult than she expected; though, after
all, he could only spell words of one syllable, and he went neither to
school nor to church. Surely he was the sort of scholar she had been in
search of. So when he returned to his former position opposite the
stepping-stones, after having admonished the straying cow--

"Well, Geordie, I am going to ask you if you will come to Kirklands,
where I live, on Sunday afternoons; and since you do not go to any
school, I can read a little to you, and perhaps help you to learn
something?" said Grace, not venturing to be more explicit on what she
wished to teach. "Do you think you would like to come?"

"Ay, would I," he replied, eagerly. "I'm terrible anxious to learn to
read the long words without spellin' them." And then he stopped and
looked hesitatingly at Grace. "Would ye take Jean, I wonder?" he said,
coming a few steps on the stones in his eagerness. "She's my sister, and
a good bit littler than me, and she can't read any, but I'm thinkin' she
could learn," he added, in a sanguine tone.

"Oh yes, certainly; I shall be so happy if you will bring your sister,"
replied Grace, looking radiant, for she had; ust been thinking that
though Geordie was certainly a very valuable unit, he could hardly, in
his own person, make the "Sunday class" on which she had set her heart.

"But I thought ye couldn't bear poor folk at Kirklands," said Geordie,
reflectively, glancing at Grace, after he had pondered over the
invitation. "Granny's aye frightened they will be takin' our housie from
us, as they have done from so many puir folk;" and then the boy stopped
suddenly, and a deep red flush rose under his bronzed cheek as he
remembered that he must be speaking to one of those same "Kirklands
folk."

"Oh, your grandmother needn't be afraid of that. I am sure my aunt would
not wish to take away her home," replied Grace, hurriedly, also flushing
with vexation, and resolving that she would certainly listen with more
interest, if she happened to be present at the next interview, to Mr.
Graham's narratives concerning the improvements, seeing that they seemed
to involve the improving away of the natives off the face of the
country.

Just then the sound of a horn came across the heather, and Geordie