real parcel all one's own. The book, without the brown paper and string,
would have been as nothing, comparatively.

Leslie could not but linger to see it untied. There came out a book,--a
wonderful big book,--Grimm's Tales; and some little papers fell to the
floor. These were flower seeds,--bags labeled "Petunia," "Candytuft,"
"Double Balsam," "Portulaca."

"Why, Prissy!" shouted Miss Hoskins in her ear as she picked them up,
and read the names; "them's elegant things! They'll beat your
four-o'clocks all to nothin'. It's lucky the old Shank-high did make a
clearin' of 'em. Tell Miss Craydocke," she continued, turning again to
Leslie, "that I'm comin' down myself, to--no, I _can't_ thank her! She's
made a _life_ for that 'ere child, out o' nothin', a'most!"

Leslie stood hushed and penetrated in the presence of this good deed,
and the joy and gratitude born of it.

"This ain't all, you see; nor't ain't nothin' new. She's ben at it these
two year; learnin' the child to read, an' tellin' her things, an'
settin' her to hunt 'em out, and to do for herself. She was crazy about
flowers, allers, an' stories; but, lor, I couldn't stop to tell 'em to
her, an' I never knew but one or two; an' now she can read 'em off to
me, like a minister. She's told her a lot o' stuff about the rocks,--_I_
can't make head nor tail on't; but it'd please you to see her fetchin'
'em in by the apern-full, an' goin' on about 'em, that is, if there was
reely any place to put 'em afterwards. That's the wust on't. I tell you,
it _is_ jest _makin_' a life out o' pieces that come to hand. Here's the
girl, an' there's the woods an' rocks; there's all there was to do with,
or likely to be; but she found the gumption an' the willingness, an'
she's done it!"

Prissy came close over to Leslie with her book in her hand. "Wait a
minute," she said, with the effort in her tone peculiar to the deaf.
"I've got something to send back."

"_If_ it's convenient, you mean," put in Aunt Hoskins sharply. "She's as
blunt as a broomstick, that child is."

But Prissy had sprung away in her squirrel-like fashion, and now came
back, bringing with her something really to make one's eyes water, if
one happened, at least, to be ever so little of a geologist,--a mass of
quartz rock as large as she could grasp with her two hands, shot through
at three different angles with three long, superb, columnar crystals of
clear, pale-green beryl. If Professor Dana had known this exa