look at the two elder ones. It was not such
boisterous play that we had, we two together, yet I think we enjoyed it
very much, half-talking, half-playing. We were very good friends, and
the morning went very quickly. When the dinner-bell rang, we agreed that
we would start off together as soon as we could for the apple-orchard at
the top of the hill, where we were not likely to be disturbed.

That hot July afternoon, how well I remember it! All among the long
grass we lay, looking up at the little, young apples overhead, and now
and then setting our teeth in the sour middles of those that had fallen.
But we were a little afraid of the effects of these unripe, bullet
things, so we did no more than taste them. Then my eight-year-old cousin
began to say me long pages of poetry, and when he had exhausted his
stores, he astonished me by the funny, learned sound of his Latin
declensions.

"You know, Sissy," he said, "I mean to be a very learned man some day,
and know twelve or fourteen languages, I think. I shall not be content
till I know more than anybody else. It will be nice to be wiser than
papa. He's ever so clever, you see; but then, of course, new things will
be found out every year, and sons must always get a-head of their
fathers, or else the world would stand still, you see."

I didn't quite see, but I pretended to. Alick had been very confidential
lately, and I knew what a sore spot there was in his heart making him
talk like this. Hadn't he confided to me with a fierce, red heat on his
forehead how his father had told him he wasn't "half a boy," because he
had turned giddy climbing a high tree? "But papa always says when Harry
bangs his head about, that he doesn't believe there can be any brains
behind such a skull as his. I dare say that is the difference between
us."

So said the young scholar with all the satisfaction possible, and I
believed in him with all my heart.

[Illustration: HOLIDAY TIME.]

However, even he grew tired of wise talk, and proposed a game with the
fallen apples. How we pelted each other, how we laughed, and, oh, how
hot we did get at last! Then off came hats and jackets, and were left
behind under the trees while we went to rest ourselves in a piece of
open shade, thrown by that large barn where, by and by, the apples would
be stored away; and this was the moment which I seized to get his advice
as to a new toy I had lately bought to send to Bobbie. It was one of
those wooden soldi