The boy looked up with a sudden flash in his blue eyes, while his face
grew crimson with pleasure.

"Would I like it?" he cried eagerly. But the next moment the glow faded,
and he looked awkwardly down at his ragged book and still more ragged
clothes. "Guess I ain't no time to l'arn that way," he muttered in
confusion.

"Nonsense!" said Hilda, decidedly. "There must be _some_ hour in the day
when you can be spared. I shall speak to Farmer Hartley about it. Don't
look at your clothes, you foolish boy," she continued, with a touch of
Queen Hildegardis' quality, yet with a kindly intonation which was new
to that potentate. "I am not going to teach your clothes. _You_ are not
your clothes!" cried Her Majesty, wondering at herself, and a little
flushed with her recent victory over the "minx." The boy's face
brightened again.

"That's so!" he said, joyously; "that's what Pink says. But I didn't
s'pose _you'd_ think so," he added, glancing bashfully at the delicate,
high-bred face, with its flashing eyes and imperial air.

"I _do_ think so!" said Hilda. "So that is settled, and we will have our
first lesson to-morrow. What would you--"

"Hilda! Hilda! where are you, dear?" called Dame Hartley's voice from
the other side of the currant-bush-hedge. And catching up her basket,
and bidding a hasty good-by to her new acquaintance and future scholar,
Hildegarde darted back through the bushes.

Zerubbabel Chirk looked after her a few moments, with kindling eyes and
open mouth of wonder and admiration.

"Wall!" he said finally, after a pause of silent meditation, "I swan! I
reelly do! I swan to man!" and fell to weeding again as if his life
depended on it.

CHAPTER V.

THE BLUE PLATTER.

"Merry it is in the green forest,
Among the leaves green!"

Thus sang Hildegarde as she sat in the west window, busily stringing her
currants. She had been thinking a great deal about Bubble Chirk, making
plans for his education, and wondering what his sister Pink was like. He
reminded her, she could not tell why, of the "lytel boy" who kept fair
Alyce's swine, in her favorite ballad of "Adam Bell, Clym o' the Clough,
and William of Cloudeslee;" and the words of the ballad rose half
unconsciously to her lips as she bent over the great yellow bowl, heaped
with scarlet and pale-gold clusters.

"Merry it is in the green forest,
Among the leaves green,
Whenas men hunt east and west
With bows and