ture found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with
an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her
book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking
unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.

Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in
the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the
smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened
as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but
"Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found
more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness
of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that
feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great
desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty
neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it
on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her
wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the
two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom
Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little
gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye
fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.
Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an
indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that
he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open
page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip
from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.

Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's
seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that
softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they
twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and "Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the
modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton
pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one." A low
laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the
Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,
and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a
starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank,
free-hearted little body, quick to read