of mealie bags into two parts--the
back being Bonaparte's bedroom, the front his schoolroom.

"Lyndall made him angry," said the girl tearfully; "and he has given
me the fourteenth of John to learn. He says he will teach me to behave
myself when Lyndall troubles him."

"What did she do?" asked the boy.

"You see," said Em, hopelessly turning the leaves, "whenever he talks
she looks out at the door, as though she did not hear him. Today
she asked him what the signs of the Zodiac were, and he said he was
surprised that she should ask him; it was not a fit and proper thing for
little girls to talk about. Then she asked him who Copernicus was; and
he said he was one of the Emperors of Rome, who burned the Christians in
a golden pig, and the worms ate him up while he was still alive. I don't
know why," said Em plaintively, "but she just put her books under her
arm and walked out; and she will never come to his school again, she
says, and she always does what she says. And now I must sit here every
day alone," said Em, the great tears dropping softly.

"Perhaps Tant Sannie will send him away," said the boy, in his mumbling
way, trying to comfort her.

"No," said Em, shaking her head; "no. Last night when the little
Hottentot maid was washing her feet, he told her he liked such feet, and
that fat women were so nice to him; and she said I must always put pure
cream in his coffee now. No; he'll never go away," said Em dolorously.

The boy put down his skins and fumbled in his pocket, and produced a
small piece of paper containing something. He stuck it out toward her.

"There, take it for you," he said. This was by way of comfort.

Em opened it and found a small bit of gum, a commodity prized by the
children; but the great tears dropped down slowly on to it.

Waldo was distressed. He had cried so much in his morsel of life that
tears in another seemed to burn him.

"If," he said, stepping in awkwardly and standing by the table, "if you
will not cry I will tell you something--a secret."

"What is that?" asked Em, instantly becoming decidedly better.

"You will tell it to no human being?"

"No."

He bent nearer to her, and with deep solemnity said:

"I have made a machine!"

Em opened her eyes.

"Yes; a machine for shearing sheep. It is almost done," said the boy.
"There is only one thing that is not right yet; but it will be soon.
When you think, and think, and think, all night and all day, it comes at
last,"