tudying English literature after a plan
of Miss Inches' own, which combined history and geography and geology,
with readings from various books, and accounted for the existence of
all the great geniuses of the world, as if they had been made after a
regular recipe,--something like this:--

TO MAKE A POET.

Take a political situation, add a rocky soil, and
the western slope of a great water-shed, pour into
a mould and garnish with laurel leaves. It will be
found delicious!

The "lambent blue" of Johnnie's eyes grew more lambent than ever as she
tried to make head and tail of this wonderful hash of people and facts.
I am afraid that Mamma Marion was disappointed in the intelligence of
her pupil, but Johnnie did her best, though she was rather aggrieved at
being obliged to study at all in summer, which at home was always
play-time. The children she knew were having a delightful vacation
there, and living out of doors from morning till night.

As the weeks went on she felt this more and more. Change of air was
making her rosy and fat, and with returning strength a good deal of the
old romping, hearty Johnnie came back; or would have come, had there
been anybody to romp with. But there was nobody, for Miss Inches
scarcely ever invited children to her house. They were brought up so
poorly she said. There was nothing inspiring in their contact. She
wanted Johnnie to be something quite different.

So Johnnie seldom saw anybody except "Mamma Marion" and her friends, who
came to drink tea and talk about "Protoplasm," and the "Higher Education
of Women," which wasn't at all interesting to poor Curly. She always sat
by, quietly and demurely, and Miss Inches hoped was listening and being
improved, but really she was thinking about something else, or longing
to climb a tree or have a good game of play with real boys and girls.
Once, in the middle of a tea-party, she stole upstairs and indulged in a
hearty cry all to herself, over the thought of a little house which she
and Dorry and Phil had built in Paradise the summer before; a house of
stumps and old boards, lined with moss, in which they had had _such_ a
good time.

Almost as soon as they got home, Miss Inches sent to Boston for papers
and furniture, and devoted her spare time to fitting up a room for her
adopted child. Johnnie was not allowed to see it till all was done, then
she was led triumphantly in. It was