“I’ve read three,” she replied. “Dad taught me to read them. He taught Julie and me to read at the same time, and he said we were very clever. He could read as easy as anything.”

“Who is Julie?” he asked.

“She is my mother,” replied the little girl, with averted face. “They taught me to call her Julie when I was a baby and they used to laugh. She—she was ill two years ago—and I haven’t seen her since—because she’s in Heaven.”

Ben’s face grew red with pity and embarrassment; for a minute both were silent. He found his voice first.

“What books have you read?” he asked.

“‘Rob Roy,’ by Sir Walter Scott,” she answered in a tremulous whisper which scarcely reached him. “It was quite a big book, in green covers—and I liked it best of all. And ‘Infantry Training.’ It was a little red book. Julie and I didn’t find it very interesting. The third was ‘The Army List.’ It had dad’s name in it and your father’s too, and hundreds and hundreds of names of other officers of the king.”

“But—you read those—‘Infantry Training’ and ‘The Army List’?”

“Yes—plenty of times.”

“And only one story like ‘Rob Roy’?”

“We hadn’t any more.”

Ben O’Dell leaned his hoe against the side of the house and hoisted himself through the open window. The little girl looked at him; but, knowing that there were tears in her eyes he did not meet her glance. Instead, he took her by the hand and led her across the room to his own particular shelves of books.

“Here’s what I used to read when I was your age,” he said. “I read them even now, sometimes. ‘Treasure Island’—you’ll like that.” He drew it out and laid it on the floor. “‘From Powder Monkey to Admiral,’ ‘My Friend Smith,’ ‘The Lady or the Tiger,’ ‘Red Fox,’ ‘The Gold Bug,’ ‘The Black Arrow,’ ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ ‘Davy and the Goblin’—you’ll like all these.”

The little girl stared speechless at the pile of books on the floor. Ben recrossed the room, climbed through the window and reshouldered his hoe. He met Uncle Jim at the near edge of the potato patch.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” said McAllister. “I don’t want to take any advantage of you by starting in at these spuds ahead of you.”

“I stopped a minute to show the little 

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