me any more
candy or raisins. I don't object to your giving me a nice big apple
occasionally, but candy and raisins you had better give to the little
children. And now to prove that I am really your friend, if you will get
that old dogeared arithmetic of yours, I will show you how to do some of
those hard sums which trouble you so."

Billy was surprised. The butt of the school, he was accustomed to the
jeers of his companions, but such kindness, and from Fanny, too, was
unexpected. He, however, drew from his desk his old slate and arithmetic
and he and Fanny were soon deep in the mysteries of compound fractions. A
half hour passed away and at the end of that time Billy's sums were done.

"Now, Billy," said Fanny, "see that you do not send me any more letters,
and mind, too, and not wink at me so often; you will remember?" Bill gave
the required promise and Fanny bounded away in quest of her schoolmates,
who laughed at her for taking so much pains with such a dolt as Bill
Jeffrey. That afternoon Fanny resolved to retrieve her character as a
scholar; so she applied herself closely to her task, and before recitation
hour arrived she had learned every word of her lesson. But alas for poor
Fanny. She was always stumbling into some new difficulty, and fate, this
afternoon, seemed resolved to play a sorry trick upon her.

The schoolhouse stood at the foot of a long, steep hill, which would have
been chosen for a capital sliding place by New York boys; but in Kentucky
the winters are, comparatively speaking, so mild that the boys know but
little of that rare fun, "sliding down hill." The winter of which we are
speaking was, however, unusually severe, and the schoolboys had persevered
until they had succeeded in making a tolerably nice sliding place, and
they had also furnished themselves with a goodly number of rather
rough-looking sleds, of which Bill Jeffrey owned the largest. The girls
were all anxious to try a ride down the hill, and none more so than Fanny;
but the boys would not lend their sleds, and the girls would not ride with
the boys, and as the latter always hid their precious sleighs, the girls
had as yet never succeeded in their wishes. But on this day, Bill Jeffrey,
touched by Fanny's unlooked-for kindness, whispered to her, just as school
was commencing, that she might take his big sled at recess.

This was a treat indeed, and when recess came, Fanny, with half a dozen
other girls, climbed to the top of the hi