his return, confronting the horned monsters with unruffled tranquillity.
Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!" he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table.
"Can you draw?" he asked.
"No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance.
"How would you like to have me learn you?"
"I'd like it."
"Well; I'll learn you O first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round O in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly.
"Now I've learned O," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."
"Well, there's an I; see, there?"
"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.
"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted,