time. Something was evidently preying on her. Her only delight
seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine
declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various
poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more
than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek,
when there seemed to be no special cause for grief. She ventured to
speak of it to Master Byles Gridley.

"Our Susan's in trouble, Mr. Gridley, for some reason or other that's
unbeknown to me, and I can't help wishing you could jest have a few words
with her. You're a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all the young
folks, and they'd tell you pretty much everything about themselves. I
calc'late she is n't at ease in her mind about somethin' or other, and I
kind o' think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of her."

"Was there ever anything like it?" said Master Byles Gridley to himself.
"I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at
this rate. Susan Posey in trouble, too! Well, well, well, it's easier
to get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks.
Susan Posey's trouble will be come at easily enough; but Myrtle Hazard
floats in deeper water. We must make Susan Posey tell her own story, or
let her tell it, for it will all come out of itself."

"I am going to dust the books in the open shelves this morning. I wonder
if Miss Susan Posey would n't like to help for half an hour or so,"
Master Gridley remarked at the breakfast-table.

The amiable girl's very pleasant countenance lighted up at the thought of
obliging the old man who had been so kind to her and so liberal to her
friend, the poet. She would be delighted to help him; she would dust
them all for him, if he wanted her to. No, Master Gridley said, he
always wanted to have a hand in it; and, besides, such a little body as
she was could not lift those great folios out of the lower shelves
without overstraining herself; she might handle the musketry and the
light artillery, but he must deal with the heavy guns himself. "As low
down as the octavos, Susan Posey, you shall govern; below that, the Salic
law."

Susan did not low much about the Salic law; but she knew he meant that he
would dust the big books and she would attend to the little ones.

A very young and a very pretty girl is sometimes quite charming in a
costume which thinks of nothing less than of being att