ck."

"That's jest what I'll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you've
got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to
go West."

"Not until fall. He's going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on
the river."

"I'll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent
all your folks."

"Joe's a generous boy, like his ma's folks," she continued, when he
had enumerated their gifts. "I am glad fer him that his pa and his
stepmother was so scrimpin'. David, would you b'lieve it, in that
great big house of the Forbeses thar wa'n't never a tidy on a chair,
and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his
stepmother died fust, so he got all the money."

David hastened home and sought his retreat in the orchard with one of
his books. M'ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned
the titles of the remaining eleven volumes.

"Well, who would have thought of a boy's preferring fairy tales!"

David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle
Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in
rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book,
from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.

"I haven't had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it's Saturday, and you
haven't played with me at all!"

The book closed instantly.

"Come on out doors, Janey," he invited.

The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M'ri's ears. She
recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an
unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little space between
twilight and lamplight was M'ri's favorite hour. In every season but
winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could watch the moon
and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had
been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin's coming. The
time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and
M'ri's pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one
when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would
never see her again, had left her alone--to do her duty.

When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and
breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put
his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen's
fairy tales. M'ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future
little romance for her two young charges whe