his
ease amid socially familiar things, and now said lightly that he had not
seen the stables. "Really, Aunt Ann, I prefer to read or to look at these
interesting Indian relics."

"Ask your uncle about them," she said, "but you will find out that horses
are important in this household." She left him with the conviction that
James Penhallow was, on the whole, right as to the educational needs of
this lad.

After lunch his uncle said, "Leila will show you about the place. You
will want to see the horses, of course, and the dogs."

"And my guinea pigs," added Leila.

He took no interest in either, and the dogs somewhat alarmed him. His
cousin, a little discouraged, led him away into the woods where the
ancient pines stood snow laden far apart with no intrusion between them
of low shrubbery. Leila was silent, half aware that he was hard to
entertain, and then mischievously wilful to give this indifferent cousin
a lesson. Presently he stood still, looking up at the towering cones of
the motionless pines.

"How stately they are--how like old Vikings!" he said. His imagination
was the oldest mental characteristic of this over-guarded, repressed
boyhood.

Leila turned, surprised. This was beyond her appreciative capacity. "Once
I heard Uncle Jim say something like that. He's queer about trees. He
talks to them sometimes just like that. There's the biggest pine over
there--I'll show it to you. Why! he will stop and pat it and say, 'How
are you?'--Isn't it funny?"

"No, it isn't funny at all. It's--it's beautiful!"

"You must be like him, John."

"I--like him! Do you think so?" He was pleased. The Indian horseman of
the plains who could talk to the big tree began to be felt by the boy as
somehow nearer.

"Let's play Indian," said Leila. "I'll show you." She was merry, intent
on mischief.

"Oh! whatever you like." He was uninterested.

Leila said, "You stand behind this tree, I will stand behind that one."
She took for herself the larger shelter. "Then you, each of us, get ready
this way a pile of snowballs. I say, Make ready! Fire! and we snowball
one another like everything. The first Indian that's hit, he falls down
dead. Then the other rushes at him and scalps him."

"But," said John, "how can he?"

"Oh! he just gives your hair a pull and makes believe."

"I see."

"Then we play it five times, and each scalp counts one. Now, isn't that
real jolly?"

John had his doubts as to this, but he took his place