ed Nellie, who willingly grasped the hand
extended, with these words, "I shall be only too pleased indeed." So
the compact was sealed--a compact which remained unbroken through the
long months and years that followed. Time and adversity only served to
strengthen the bond, and the gray twilight of life found the friends of
childhood's days friends still.

"Hark to the bell! are you ready?" asked Winnie, stretching her lazy
little form and rising reluctantly from the cosy corner; "now for a
long, long lecture on subject and predicate, ugh! How I do hate
lessons, to be sure;" and Miss Blake, parting the tapestried curtains,
stepped along the hall with a very mutinous face.

Nellie having come to school with the fixed determination to make the
most of her time, prepared to listen to the master's instructions with
all due attention; but Winnie's incessant fidgeting and yawning baffled
every attempt, and the ludicrous answers, given with tantalizing
readiness, almost upset her gravity, despite Mr. King's unconcealed
vexation.

"This is one of her provoking days," whispered a girl, noting Nellie's
puzzled face; "she will tease and annoy each teacher as much as
possible all this afternoon---she always does so when in these moods.
Do not think her stupid, Miss Latimer; as the French master often says,
'It is not lack of ability, but lack of application.' She won't
learn," and Agnes Drummond, one of Winnie's stanchest allies, shook her
head admonishingly at the little dunce as she spoke; but a defiant pout
of the rosy lips was the only answer vouchsafed to the friendly
warning, and the next moment an absurdly glaring error brought down on
Winnie the righteous indignation of her irritated teacher, and resulted
in solitary confinement during recess.

Sitting alone in the large empty class-room, the poor child burst into
a flood of passionate tears. "It's too bad," she cried rebelliously,
wiping her wet eyes and flinging her book aside with contemptuous
touch. "There, I can't go home now, and we are to have jam pudding to
dinner. Dick will chuckle--horrid boy! and eat my share as well as his
own. I know he will, and I do so love those kind of puddings,
especially when they are made with strawberry jam. Oh dear, how I envy
Alexander Selkirk on his desert island! I am sure he never had any
nasty old lessons to learn, and I think he was very stupid to grumble
over his solitude when he could do every day simply what he ple