t out in front of her.

She seemed to take very naturally to the situation, and indeed her
small, sturdy person looked as much a part of the homely scene as the
stubby little daisy she held in her hand. As she sat there in the
sunshine, placid and self-contained, a mysterious trampling and
crackling began among the trees close at hand, and one after another,
three solemn-eyed cows emerged into the clearing and fixed a wondering
gaze upon the little visitor. She, nothing daunted, calmly returned
their gaze, only holding the daisy a little more tightly, lest one of
the new-comers should take it into her head to dispute the prize; and
Simon found her, upon 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, much impressed by the
discovery. "But then it's an _O_ all the same, and this one is an _I_."

"Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another."

Thus unheralded and unawares come the great moments of life. When little
Eliza mounted that wooden settle, her mind was innocent of artificial
accomplishments; before she again stood on her round fat legs, she had
begun the ascent of that path which leads away up to the heights of
human knowledge. It is a long ascent and few accomplish it, but the
first essential steps had been taken: little Eliza had become a
_Scholar_!

Not only had she learned to recognize an _O_ and an _I_, an _S_, an _M_,
and an _N_, but she had laboriously made each one of them with her own
hand. And, furthermore, she had seen them combi