m almost by
heart.

The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading
sometimes after such entertainment. So many of them were about
unnaturally good children who never did wrong, and unnaturally bad
children who never did right. At the end there was always the word
MORAL, in big capital letters, as if the readers were supposed to be too
blind to find it for themselves, and it had to be put directly across
the path for them to stumble over.

Betty laughed at them sometimes, but she touched the little books with
reverent fingers, when she remembered how old they were, and how long
ago their first childish readers laid them aside. The hands that had
held them first had years before grown tired and wrinkled and old, and
had been lying for a generation under the myrtle and lilies of the
churchyard outside.

Many an afternoon she had spent, perched in the high window, with her
feet drawn up under her on the sill, reading aloud to Davy, who lay
outside on the grass, staring up at the sky. Davy's short fat legs could
not climb from the board to the window-sill, and since this little
Mahomet could not come to the mountain, Betty had to carry the mountain
to him.

The reading was slow work sometimes. Davy's mind, like his legs, could
not climb as far as Betty's, and she usually had to stop at the bottom
of every page to explain something. Often he fell asleep in the middle
of the most interesting part, and then Betty read on to herself, with
nothing to break the stillness around her but the buzzing of the wasps,
as they darted angrily in and out of the open window above her head.

To-day Betty had read nearly an hour, and Davy's eyelids were beginning
to flutter drowsily, when they heard the slow thud of a horse's hoofs in
the thick dust of the road. Betty stopped reading to listen, and Davy
sat up to look.

"It's Jake," he announced, recognising the boy who had helped his father
with the ploughing.

"Hope he won't see us," said Betty, in a low tone, drawing in her head.
"We are not hurting anything, but maybe some of the church people
wouldn't like it, if they knew I climbed in at the window. They might
think it wasn't respectful."

"He's looking this way," said Davy, who had stood up for a better view,
but squatted down again at Betty's command.

[Illustration: "OH, RUN AND GET IT, QUICK, DAVY,' SHE CRIED."]

It was too late. Jake had recognised Davy's shock of yellow hair, and
called out, good-