the Little Red Chimney?" she asked. 

 The Candy Man did. 

 "Well, a nice old man named Uncle Bob lives there, and I asked him why that chimney was red, and he said because it was new. A branch of a tree fell on the old one. The tree where the squirrel house is, you know." 

 The Candy Man remembered the tree. 

 "He said the doctor was going to have it painted, but he kind of liked it red, and so did her ladyship." 

 "And who might her ladyship be?" the Candy Man inquired. 

 "That's what I asked him, and he said, 'You come over and see,' and then he said—now listen to this, for it's just like a story." Virginia lifted an admonishing finger. "He said, whenever I saw smoke coming out of that Little Red Chimney, I might know her ladyship had come to town. You'd better believe I'm going to watch. And what do you think! I can see it from our dining-room window!" she concluded. 

 "Most interesting," said the Candy Man politely, without the least idea how interesting it really was. 

 Virginia's gaze suddenly fastened on a small book lying on the seat of the Candy Wagon, and she had seized it before its owner could protest. "What a funny name," she said. "'E p i c t e t u s.' What does that spell? And what made you cut a hole in this page? It looks like a window." 

 The page was a fly leaf, from which a name, possibly that of a former owner, had been removed. Below it the Candy Man's own name was now written. 

 "It was so when I got it," he answered, holding out his hand for it. He had no mind to have his book in any other keeping, for somewhere within its leaves lay a crimson flower. 

 Before she returned it Virginia examined the back. "Vol. I, what does that mean?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer she tossed it back to him, and ran to join the other pigeons. 

 From this time Virginia began to be almost as constant a visitor as the Reporter. She had a way of bursting into conversation without any preface whatever, speaking entirely from the fullness of her heart at the moment. 

 "I'd give anything in the world to be pretty," she remarked one day, resting her school bag on the carriage block and sighing deeply. 

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