inued in a cramped hand, "I wish there were more nice
words--duty won't do."

This was a sentence calculated to puzzle even parents intelligent as
Judge and Mrs. Lomax imagined themselves.

Then the child turned over to her "free" sheet, on which she might write
and spell as she pleased, and gazed at it wistfully.

Oh, to purr out her little heart upon it so that the mother so far away
might hear her speaking, whispering, just as if she were cuddled up in
the dear arms!

What a tragic thing this was in her hand, this red pen with the end
sucked nearly white, so powerful, so powerless!

"I love you," she wrote, and then covered a line or two with black
crosses, that meant a passion of kisses. Oh, to catch at all the words
that were surging in her heaving little breast, and to force them down
on the white sheet, and to send them away red-hot across the sea!

She dipped wildly in the ink, she breathed hard and held the pen in
almost a convulsive way. But the pitiful steel thing only spluttered,
and left a few lines of black scribble. Could the mother understand
that? Ah, perhaps, perhaps.

"I hop you are well, from Lynn."

And so concluded the bi-weekly letter, with a big tear as usual, for
Lynn simply could not write to mother without crying a little, though
for the rest of the time she was a merry little grig.

Muffie was still blissfully untroubled by the need of orthography, and
scribbled steadily over four pages, her lips moving all the time to such
tune as "'so we went down the gully and ferns, such a lot. And I got the
best of all, and it's under the house for you in a tin from Anna, and
all of it's for you in the bushhouse at our proper house and daddie.'"

After a time the Serenade began to get upon the nerves of all the room.

Eleven times did poor Pauline attack it and eleven times did she have a
breakdown. It was not always the D flat that caused the downfall, though
Miss Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the
difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness
everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her
nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that
the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a
despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole performance began
again.

"Oh, make her stop, Miss Bibby," implored Muffie; "she intrupts me
dreadf'lly, and I'm in the middle of tell