[Illustration:  UP TO THE MOON!]

And, first of all, we thought of the swing as the best thing to be done, and for half an hour it was most delightful!  Don’t you know the pleasant feeling it is, just up at the very highest point, when you are not quite sure whether you are frightened or not?  Don’t you know?  And you laugh a little anxiously, and are very glad to find yourself safely down again.  Oh, it was very good fun for a little while!  Only Harry came to swing us, and he was so fond of seeing your feet up into the branches, that you never could be quite sure that he would not send you head-over-heels.  Lottie was very brave, but I could not quite stand it, so I stood by and watched; and when they asked me to have another try, I said, “No, thank you.”  I think Alick saw that I was a little red and uncomfortable, for he asked me to come and play on the lawn.  We ran away, taking a last look at the two elder ones.  It was not such boisterous play that we had, we two together, yet I think we enjoyed it very much, half-talking, half-playing.  We were very good friends, and the morning went very quickly.  When the dinner-bell rang, we agreed that we would start off together as soon as we could for the apple-orchard at the top of the hill, where we were not likely to be disturbed.

That hot July afternoon, how well I remember it!  All among the long grass we lay, looking up at the little, young apples overhead, and now and then setting our teeth in the sour middles of those that had fallen.  But we were a little afraid of the effects of these unripe, bullet things, so we did no more than taste them.  Then my eight-year-old cousin began to say me long pages of poetry, and when he had exhausted his stores, he astonished me by the funny, learned sound of his Latin declensions.

“You know, Sissy,” he said, “I mean to be a very learned man some day, and know twelve or fourteen languages, I think.  I shall not be content till I know more than anybody else.  It will be nice to be wiser than papa.  He’s ever so clever, you see; but then, of course, new things will be found out every year, and sons must always get a-head of their fathers, or else the world would stand still, you see.”

I didn’t quite see, but I pretended to.  Alick had been very confidential lately, and I knew what a sore spot there was in his heart making him talk like this.  Hadn’t he confided to me with a fierce, red heat on his forehead how his father had told him he wasn’t “half a boy,” because he had turned giddy climbing a high tree?  “But papa always says when Harry bangs his head about, that he doesn’t believe there can be any brains behind such a skull as his.  I dare say that is the difference between us.”

So said the young scholar with all the satisfaction possible, and I believed in him with all my heart.

[Illustration:  HOLIDAY TIME.]