“This is my birth-day; I am twenty years old,” said Mae, “Why, what are you doing?” For Norman had bent down to the sand also, and had drawn a queer little figure there.

“That is you when you were one year old,” he laughed, “and you could only crow and kick your small feet, and smile now and then, and cry the rest of the time.”

“That is about all I can do yet,” said Mae.

“Here comes number two,” and he drew his hand across the sand and smoothed the baby image away, leaving in its place a round, sturdy little creature, poised dangerously on one foot.  “You have walked alone, and you have called your father’s name, and you’re a wonderful child by this time.”

“This is the three-year-old, white aprons and curls, please observe.  Now, you recite ‘Dickery, dickery dock’ and ‘I want to be an angel,’ and you have cut all your wisdom teeth.”

“O, Mr. Mann, I haven’t cut them yet.  Babies don’t have them.”

“Don’t they?  Well, you have other teeth in their place, white and sharp—­but by this time you are four years old.”

“Ah, here I begin to remember.  You draw the pictures, and I’ll describe myself.  Four years old!—­let me see—­I had a sled for Christmas, and I used to eat green apples.  That’s all I can remember; and five and six years old were just the same.”

“O, no, I’m sure you went to church for the first time somewhere along there; and isn’t that a noteworthy event?  I suppose all your thoughts were of your button boots and your new parasol?”

“I behaved beautifully, I know; mamma says so; sat up like a lady, while you were sleeping, on that very same Sunday, off in some little country church, I suppose.”

“I shouldn’t wonder—­sleeping in my brother’s outgrown coat into the bargain, with the sleeves dangling over my little brown hands.”

“It doesn’t seem as if they could ever have been very little, does it, Mr. Mann?”

Mr. Mann unfolded five fingers and a thumb and surveyed them gravely for a moment.  “It is strange that this once measured three inches by two and couldn’t hit out any better than your’s could.”

Mae had laid her hand on her knee and was looking at it also in the most serious manner.  Now she doubled it into a small but very pugnacious looking fist, which she shook most entrancingly before the very eyes of the young man by her side.  The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add:  “Go on with your dissolving views.  It is number eight’s turn next.  You are the showman, and I am interested spectator.”

“You insist upon describing my pictures, so I think you are properly first assistant to the grand panorama.  Here’s eight-year-old.  Try your powers on her.”

“Let me see.  O, then I read all the while, the ‘Fairchild Family’ and ‘Anna Ross,’ and I used to wear my hair in very smooth braids, I remember.  I was ever so good.”

“Impossible; you must have forgotten,” suggested Norman.  “You surely whispered in school and committed similar dreadful crimes.  Poor little prig.”