d she
felt so crushed and unhappy. She was to look after the house for
her mother and father, and now this had to happen!

"But the spectacles?" snapped Agrippa. "They must have dropped,
too?"

"No," said the girl, "there are no spectacles here." Suddenly a
faint hope sprang up in her. What if he couldn't do anything to the
clock without his glasses? What if they should be lost? And just
then her eye lit tin the spectacle-case, behind a leg of the table.

The old man rummaged and searched among the cog-wheels and springs
in his bundle. "I don't see but I'll have to get down on the floor
myself, and hunt," he said presently. "Get up, crofter-brat!"

Quick as a flash the little girl's hand shot out and closed over
the spectacle-case, which she hid under her apron.

"Up with you!" thundered Agrippa. "I believe you're lying to me.
What are you hiding under your apron? Come! Out with it!"

She promptly drew out one hand. The other hand she had kept under
her apron the whole time. Now she had to show that one, too. Then
he saw the huttered bread.

"Ugh! It's buttered bread!" Agrippa shrank back as if the girl were
holding out a rattlesnake.

"I sat eating it when you came, and then I put it out of sight for,
I know you don't like butter."

The old man got down on his hands and knees and began to search,
but to no purpose, of course.

"You must have left them where you were last," said Glory Goldie.

He had wondered about that himself, though he thought it unlikely.
At all events he could do nothing to the clock without his glasses.
He had no choice but to gather up his tools and replace the works
in the clock-case.

While his back was turned the little girl slipped the spectacles
into his bundle, where he found them when he got to Loevdala Manor--
the last place he had been to before coming to Ruffluck Croft. On
opening the bundle to show they were not there, the first object
that caught his eye was the spectacle-case.

Next time he saw Jan and Katrina in the pine grove outside the
church, he went up to them.

"That girl of yours, that handy little girl of yours is going to be
a comfort to you," he told them.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

There were many who said to Jan of Ruffluck that his little girl
would be a comfort to him when she was grown. Folks did not seem to
understand that she already made him happy every day and every hour
that God granted them. Only once in the whole time of her growing
period did J