carries you back to the old days. Just think how it was there all these years. Who do you suppose Ann was? And it all happened before I was born. Isn’t that wonderful!”

found

read

wonderful

Harry said, “Oh, quite a few things happened before you were born.”

Then he took the letter and read it through again, and then folded it in the old creases. Then he just said, “Humph!” After that he opened it very carefully and laid it on the table and read it again. Then he said, sort of as if he were thinking, “Bully old top, that fellow was. I’d like to have known him. He seems to have been made out of pretty good stuff.”

“And he was so brave,” Grace said.

brave

Jiminies, I’ll never forget how Harry Donnelle looked that night while he sat there studying that letter. He just kept rubbing his tongue along his lips, and studying the paper, just as if he were trying to do an example.

After a while he said, “Funny; wonder what became of that other chap—or scoundrel as old Hickory-nut calls him.”

“That’s a good name for him—Hickory-nut,” I said.

“I wonder who he was,” Grace said; “and he was bringing seeds home for his wife to plant! Isn’t that lovely where he admits he’s a rough diamond! Oh, I think he was splendid.”

splendid

“He was a hero,” Pee-wee said.

“And he was bringing those seeds home to her,” Grace said, “so they would grow up and they could have the same kind of a tree at home—oh, I think he was just splendid!”

splendid

“He was a bully old cheese,” Harry said.

“He wasn’t a cheese at all,” Grace said, kind of all excited like. “He thought more of his home than he did even of his bags of gold. Even those seeds that he lost—oh, I think he was fine!”

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