too," said her niece.

"Oh," from Harriet, understanding at last; "but isn't school about
over?"

"There's two weeks more."

"If it will make you happy, why not, if the teacher does not object?"

So Alexina went with Emily to school. King William was there, but he
hardly noticed her, seeming gloomy and given to taking his slate off
into corners.

"He don't want to come," explained Emily; "he's the only boy."

"Then what does he come for?" queried the practical Alexina.

"His mother won't let him go to a public school."

There was more to be learned about William. He fought the boys who
went to the public school, because they jeered him in his ignominy.
Alexina saw it happening up the alley but, strangely enough, when
William appeared at school, he seemed cheered up, though something of
a wreck.

Out of school, Alexina often went over to Emily's house to play. There
were no servants there, but her mamma beat up things in crocks, and
her great-aunty, a brisk little old woman with sharp eyes, made yeast
cakes and dried them out under the arbour and milked the cow, too, and
Emily's little brother, Oliver, carried milk to the neighbours. Once
in the spotless, shining kitchen, Alexina was allowed to wield a mop
in a dish-pan and, still again, to stir at batter in a bowl.

In the room which would have been the parlour in another house,
Emily's grandfather Pryor sat at a table with books around him, and
wrote on big sheets of paper in close writing. He was a stern old man
and his hair stood out fine and white about his head. Once, as he
passed across the front porch, he looked at Emily, then stopped,
pointing to the chain about her neck. It was Alexina's little gold
necklace which Emily had begged to wear.

"Take it off," he said.

Emily obeyed, but her checks were flaming, and when he had gone she
threw her head back. "When I'm grown, I mean to have them of my own,
and wear them, too," she said.

She seemed happier away from home. "Let's go over to your house," she
always said. She liked grown people, too, and Uncle Austen once patted
her head, and after she had gone said to Aunt Harriet: "A handsome
child, an unusually pleasing child."

But while Alexina played thus with Emily, more often she trudged
across to King William's.

The nature of engrossment was different over there. Often as not it
was theology, though this, to be sure, was the Captain's word for it,
not his son's.

Willy's mother, like Aunt