It required no great persuasion to induce the child to
answer that they had better accept the invitation and
remain. She was happy to show her gratitude to the kind
schoolmaster by busying herself in the performance of such
household duties as his little cottage stood in need of. When
these were done, she took some needle-work from her
basket, and sat herself down upon a stool beside the lattice,
where the honeysuckle and woodbine entwined their tender
stems, and stealing into the room filled it with their deli-
cious breath. Her grandfather was basking in the sun
outside, breathing the perfume of the flowers, and idly
watching the clouds as they floated on before the light
summer wind.

As the schoolmaster, after arranging the two forms in
due order, took his seat behind his desk and made other
preparations for school, the child was apprehensive that
she might be in the way, and offered to withdraw to her
little bedroom. But this he would not allow, and as he
seemed pleased to have her there, she remained, busying
herself with her work.

"Have you many scholars, sir?" she asked.

The poor schoolmaster shook his head, and said that
they barely filled the two forms.

"And are the others clever, sir?" asked the child,
glancing at the trophies on the wall.

"Good boys," returned the schoolmaster, "good boys
enough, my dear, but they'll never do like that."

A small white-headed boy with a sunburnt face appeared
at the door while he was speaking, and stopping there to
make a rustic bow, came in and took his seat upon one of
the forms. The white-headed boy then put an open book
astonishingly dog's-eared, upon his knees, and thrusting
his hands into his pockets began counting the marbles with
which they were filled; displaying in the expression of his
face a remarkable capacity of totally abstracting his mind
from the spelling on which his eyes were fixed. Soon
afterwards another white-headed little boy came straggling
in, and after him a red-headed lad, and after him two more
with white heads, and then one with a flaxen poll, and so
on until the forms were occupied by a dozen boys or there-
abouts, with heads of every colour but grey, and ranging
in their ages from four years old to fourteen years or
more; for the legs of the youngest were a long way from
the floor when he sat upon the form, and the eldest was a

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