fair, and I received her kindly.

"Major Henry," said she, "will you show me what this means, please?"

She sat down close to me--for nobody minded me--and put her finger on
the place.

Now "the book," though jointly purchased by the Basins from a
travelling salesman, as a highly illuminated volume, promising much of
a lively nature, had turned out to be to an altogether unexpected
degree serious and didactic.

I followed Belle O'Neill's finger.

"Impressive Lesson.
Perishableness!"

[Illustration: Skull]

"What does it mean?" said the girl, with pale, inquiring lips.

Now as I loved the courtly valor of my race, I laughed.

"You do not understand those long words, Belle. It means, in those
peculiar words, something about a Jack-o'-lantern."

"Oh," said Belle, gazing at it with sudden refreshment, "I guess it 's
the only funny one in the book! They're usually so solemn."

We turned to the next page:

"Important Lesson.
Discontent.

The Bachelor's Button that wanted to be a sunflower: the scow that
wanted to be a schooner."

"Why," said Belle, with her finger on the cut of the angry and
resentful bachelor's button that was throwing down its petals because
it could not be a sunflower--"why did it want to be a sunflower?"

"I can't imagine," I said.

"Wouldn't you just as soon be a bachelor's button as a sunflower?"

"Well, I don't know," I murmured; but while I affected still to be
pondering this subject doubtfully, Wesley came up from the clam flats.

He pointed to the cut on the opposite page:

"Warning Lesson.
Slothfulness."

A plump and evidently highly contented maiden was here represented as
lolling on a sofa.

"'T means _lazy_. She looks jest like Belle O'Neill, don't she?" said
Wesley, grinning maliciously.

"Who"--flamed up Belle O'Neill--"put straws into the cow's teats, an'
let the milk run, while he laid out on the grass an' slep', and Miss
Pray found it out and flailed him with the broomstick?"

Wesley's grin froze on his features; he returned wearily to his rake.

"Comforting Lesson.
A saint walking among the saved, on Revival Terrace."

But the saint, though tall and bearded, wore a ball dress such as the
unchastened belles of society sport upon earth, a profuse skirt, with
flashing train; and he was walking quite alone.

"Where are the 'saved'?" said Belle, with ghastly hope.

"They are just around the corner," said I cheerful