e hours."

"Dear me! And what was this wonderful thing?"

David smiled, but he shook his head.

"I can't tell you that yet--in words; but I'll play it. You see, I
can't always play them twice alike,--those little songs that I
find,--but this one I can. It sang so long in my head, before my violin
had a chance to tell me what it really was, that I sort of learned it.
Now, listen!" And he began to play.

It was, indeed, a beautiful song, and Miss Holbrook said so with
promptness and enthusiasm; yet still David frowned.

"Yes, yes," he answered, "but don't you see? That was telling you about
something inside of me that made all my hours sunshiny ones. Now, what
you want is something inside of you to make yours sunshiny, too. Don't
you see?"

An odd look came into Miss Holbrook's eyes.

"That's all very well for you to say, David, but you haven't told me
yet, you know, just what it is that's made all this brightness for you."

The boy changed his position, and puckered his forehead into a deeper
frown.

"I don't seem to explain so you can understand," he sighed. "It isn't
the SPECIAL thing. It's only that it's SOMETHING. And it's thinking
about it that does it. Now, mine wouldn't make yours shine,
but--still,"--he broke off, a happy relief in his eyes,--"yours could
be LIKE mine, in one way. Mine is something that is going to happen to
me--something just beautiful; and you could have that, you
know,--something that was going to happen to you, to think about."

Miss Holbrook smiled, but only with her lips, Her eyes had grown somber.

"But there isn't anything 'just beautiful' going to happen to me,
David," she demurred.

"There could, couldn't there?"

Miss Holbrook bit, her lip; then she gave an odd little laugh that
seemed, in some way, to go with the swift red that had come to her
cheeks.

"I used to think there could--once," she admitted; "but I've given that
up long ago. It--it didn't happen."

"But couldn't you just THINK it was going to?" persisted the boy. "You
see I found out yesterday that it's the THINKING that does it. All day
long I was thinking--only thinking. I wasn't DOING it, at all. I was
really raking behind the cart; but the hours all were sunny."

Miss Holbrook laughed now outright.

"What a persistent little mental-science preacher you are!" she
exclaimed. "And there's truth--more truth than you know--in it all,
too. But I can't do it, David,--not that--not that. 'T would take more