pretty--and queer--perhaps queerer
than pretty. The walls were green-gray, the carpet gray-green, the
furniture pale yellow, almost white, with brass handles and hinges, and
lines of dull red tiles set into the wood. Every picture on the walls
had a meaning, Miss Inches explained.

"Some of these I chose to strengthen your mind, Johnnie, dear," she
said. "These portraits, for example. Here are Luther, Mahomet, and
Theodore Parker, three of the great Protestants of the world. Life, to
be worthy, must be more or less of a protest always. I want you to
renumber that. This photograph is of Michael Angelo's Moses. I got you
that too, because it is so strong. I want you to be strong. Do you like
it?"

"I think it would be prettier without the curl-papers," faltered the
bewildered Johnnie.

"Curl-papers! My dear child, where are your eyes? Those are horns. He
wore horns as a law-giver."

"Yes, ma'am," said Johnnie, not daring to ask any more questions for
fear of making more mistakes.

"These splendid autotypes are from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
Rome, the glory of the world," went on Miss Inches. "And here, Johnnie,
is the most precious of all. This I got expressly for you. It is an
education to have such a painting as that before your eyes. I rely very
much upon its influence on you."

The painting represented what seemed to be a grove of tall yellow-green
sea-weeds, waving against a strange purple sky. There was a path between
the stems of the sea-weeds, and up this path trotted a pig, rather soft
and smudgy about his edges, as if he were running a little into the
background. His quirly tail was smudgy also; and altogether it was more
like the ghost of a pig than a real animal, but Miss Inches said _that_
was the great beauty of the picture.

Johnnie didn't care much for the painted pig, but she liked him better
than the great Reformers, who struck her as grim and frightful; while
the very idea of going to sleep in the room with the horned Moses scared
her almost to death. It preyed on her mind all day; and at night, after
Johnnie had gone to bed, Miss Inches, passing the door, heard a little
sob, half strangled by the pillows. She went in.

"What _is_ the matter?" she cried.

"It's that awful man with horns," gasped Johnnie, taking her head out
from under the bedclothes. "I can't go to sleep, he frightens me so."

"Oh, my darling, what, _what_ weakness," cried Mamma Marion.

She was too kind, howev