ach school. It's the hatefulest thing there
is! It's nice to be a doctor and have your own horse, and go round like
a man. If it wasn't for seeing so many sick people! I guess I'll write
stories and things."

"So would I," Philip confessed, "if I knew any."

"Why, you make 'em up. Mamma says they are all made up. I can make 'em
in my head any time when I'm alone."

"I don't know," Philip said, reflectively, "but I could make up a story
about Murad Ault, and how he got to be a pirate and got in jail and was
hanged."

"Oh, that wouldn't be a real story. You have got to have different
people in it, and have 'em talk, just as they do in books; and somebody
is in love and somebody dies, and the like of that."

"Well, there are such stories in The Pirate's Own Book, and it's awful
interesting."

"I'd be ashamed, Philip Burnett, to read such a cruel thing, all about
robbers and murders."

"I didn't read it through; Alice said she was going to burn it up. I
shouldn't wonder if she did."

"Boys make me tired!" exclaimed this little piece of presumption; and
this attitude of superiority exasperated Philip more than anything else
his mentor had said or done, and he asserted his years of seniority by
jumping up and saying, decidedly, "It's time to go home. Shall I carry
your wreath?"

"No, I thank you!" replied Celia, with frigid politeness.

"Down in the meadow," said Philip, making one more effort at
conciliation, "we can get some tigerlilies, and weave them in and make a
beautiful wreath for your mother."

"She doesn't like things fussed up," was the gracious reply. And then
the children trudged along homeward, each with a distinct sense of
injury.

IV

Traits that make a child disagreeable are apt to be perpetuated in the
adult. The bumptious, impudent, selfish, "hateful" boy may become a
man of force, of learning, of decided capacity, even of polish and
good manners, and score success, so that those who know him say how
remarkable it is that such a "knurly" lad should have turned out
so well. But some exigency in his career, it may be extraordinary
prosperity or bitter defeat, may at any moment reveal the radical traits
of the boy, the original ignoble nature. The world says that it is
a "throwing back"; it is probably only a persistence of the original
meanness under all the overlaid cultivation and restraint.

Without bothering itself about the recondite problems of heredity or
the influence of envi