looked over where we sat?  I thought he touched his lips to them, but was not sure.  Do you remember?  He is studying law now all the time he can get in Judge St. Claire’s office, but he comes to read to me for an hour or more nearly every day.  He came of his own accord, too.  I did not ask him, or even hint, as Tom says I do, when I want anything; and sometimes I half think he is trying to drive something into my head, or was, when he began to read to me about those old Greeks, Hesiod, or Herod, I don’t know which, and Theogony—­that’s rather a pretty name, don’t you think so?  But I could not stand the Greeks.  My mind is too weak to be impressed by anything Grecian, unless it is the Grecian bend.  You tried it until you were discouraged and gave it up, telling me I was the stupidest idiot you ever saw!  That was the time we had the a spelling-school in the Tramp House, and you were the teacher, and Harold chose me first, and I spelled biscuit “bisket!” Do you remember how I cried? and when you told me nobody would ever like me unless I knew something, Harold said.  “Don’t talk like that, Jerrie; those who know the least are frequently liked the best.”

’What a comfort those words have been to me; and especially at the time when I failed so utterly in examination at Vassar and had to give it up.  Oh, Jerrie, you do not know how mortified I was over that failure, to think I knew so little; and the worst of it is I can’t learn, or understand; or remember, and it makes my head ache so to try.  I am sorry most on father’s account, he is so proud of me and would like to see me take the lead in everything.  Poor father! he is growing old so fast.  Why, his hair is white as snow, and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does.  I wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his knee; then he brightens up and calls me his pet and darling, and talks queer kind of talk, I think.  He asks me if I am glad I live at Tracy Park—­if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should be as happy if I were poor—­not real poor, you know, but as we were at Langley before I was born.  I went there with him a few weeks ago for the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such a poky little house, with the stairs going right up in the room, and such a tiny, stuffy bedroom!  I tried to fancy mamma’s scent bottles, and brushes, and combs, and the box for polishing her nails, transported to that room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing her hair.  It made me laugh till I cried, and I think papa did actually cry, for he sat down upon the stairs and turned his head away, and when he looked up his eyes were all wet and red, with such a sorry look in them that I went straight up and kissed him, and asked him playfully if he was crying for the old days when he lived in that house and sold codfish in the store.

’"Yes, Maude,” he said.