the child to greet me. Her face was
so little menacing that I called her "Miss Katharine" on the spot. But
my business was with the child.

"Lucy," I said, as I took the wicker chair by the hammock in which they
both lounged, "there is a boy at school who looks at you a great deal
when you're not watching him--you catch him at it--but he never comes
near you. He acts as if he were afraid of you. He is an awkward, stupid
boy. If he gets up to recite about geography, or about 'a gentleman sent
his servant to buy ten and five-eighths yards of fine broadcloth,' or
anything of that sort, and if he happens to catch your eye at the
moment, he flounders like a caught fish, stares hard at the map of North
America on the wall, and sits down in disgrace. And when the other boys
are chasing you and pulling off your hair ribbons, he mopes off in a
corner of the school yard, though he looks as if he'd like to shoot down
all the other boys in cold blood."

"He has nice hair," said my woman child.

"Oh, he _has!_ Very well; does his name happen to be 'Horsehead' or
anything like that--the name the boys call him by, you know?"

"Fatty--Fatty Budlow, if that's the one you mean. Do you know him, Uncle
Maje?"

"Better than any boy in the world! Haven't I been telling you about
him?"

"Once he brought a bag of candy to school, and I thought he was coming
up to hand it to me, but he turned red in the face and stuffed it right
into his pocket."

"He meant to give it to you, really--he bought it for you--but he
couldn't when the time came."

"Oh, did he tell you?"

"It wasn't necessary for him to tell me. I know that boy, I tell you,
through and through. Lucy, do you think you could encourage him a
little, now and then--be sociable with him--not enough to hurt, of
course? You don't know how he'd appreciate the least kindness. He might
remember it all his life."

"I might pat his hair--he has such nice hair--if he wouldn't know
it--but of course he would know it, and when he looks at you, he is so
queer--"

"Yes, I know; I suppose it is hopeless. Couldn't you even ask him to
write in your autograph album?"

"Y-e-s--I could, only he'd be sure to write something funny like 'In
Memory's wood-box let me be a stick.' He always does write something
witty, and I don't much care for ridiculous things in my album; I'm
being careful with it."

"Well, if he's as witty as _that_ in your album, it will be to mask a
bleeding heart. I happ