“One sloop yat Jennie H swoped for hockey skates when it got cold.

One air riffle.

Three Tickets.

One riding skirt.

Two Tickets.

Six white rats two died.

Four Tickets.

Leather Stocking Tales.  Three Books.

Three Tickets.

Four Boxing Gloves.

Eight Tickets.

One bull tarrier dog and collar he fought Len Fogerty’s dog bit him all up and father sent him away.”

“I remember him,” said Mr. Hawtry, “a well-bred beast but a holy terror, go on dear.”

“One Byccle.

Three Tickets.

Stanley’s Darkest Africa two books but not very new.

One printing press.

Two Tickets.

Treasure Island.  One Book.”

“And that’s all the big things,” finished Cecelia Anne in evident relief.  “Jimmie wrote down the prices, wouldn’t you like to see them?”

And she crossed to Mr. Debrett and laid the open book on his knee.

Mr. Debrett, as Cecelia Anne teetered up and down on her heels and toes before him, read the list again, counted up the total expenditure and admitted that his ward had got remarkably good value for her money.

“But what are all these ‘tickets,’ my dear?” he asked her.

“Eden Musee,” answered Cecelia Anne.  And the very thought of it drew her to her mother’s knee.  “Jimmie and the boys used to take me there Saturday afternoons in the winter to try to get my nerve up.  They say,” she admitted dolefully, “that I haven’t got much.  So they used to take me to the Chamber of Horrors so’s I’d get accustomed to life.  That’s what Jimmie thought I needed.  They used to like it, and I expect I’d have liked it, too, if I could have kept my eyes open, but I never could.  I couldn’t even get them open when the boys stood me right close to that gentleman having death throes on the ground after he’d been hung on a tree.  You can hear him breathing!”

“I know him well,” said Mr. Debrett.  “He is rather awful I must admit.  And now we’ll talk about the books.  Don’t you care at all about ’Little Men’ and ‘Little Women’ or the ‘Elsie Books?’”

“Jimmie says,” Cecelia Anne made reply, “that ‘Darkest Africa’ is better for me.  It tells me just where to hit an elephant to give him the death throes.  He says the ‘Elsie Books’ wouldn’t be any help to us even with a buffalo.  We’re going to buy ’The Wild Huntress, or Love in the Wilderness’ next month.  Jimmie thinks that’s sure to get my nerve up—­being about a girl, you see—­”

“And ‘Treasure Island’ now;” said her guardian, “did you enjoy that?  It came rather late in my life, but I remember thinking it a great book.”

“It’s great for nerve.  Jimmie often reads me parts of it after I go to bed at night.  There’s a poem in it—­he taught me that by heart—­and if I think to say it the last thing before I go to sleep he says I’ll get so’s nothing can scare me.”