by t hour together when i m walking i lone places and if i n done a bit o mischief i tell him got no secrets but what knows em he knows about my big thumb he does your big what s that bob said that s what it is miss said bob quickly exhibiting a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey it tells i measuring out the flannel you see i carry flannel cause it s light for my pack an it s dear you see so a big thumb tells i clap my thumb at the end o the yard and cut o the hither side of it and the old women aren t up to t but bob said looking serious that s i don t like to hear you say that don t you miss said bob then i m sorry i said it but i m so used to talking to an he doesn t mind a bit o when it s them women as an an ud like to get their flannel for nothing an ud ask how i got my dinner out on t i cheat any body as doesn t want to cheat me miss � i m a honest chap i am only i must a bit o sport an now i don t go wi the i n got no to come over but them ing women i wish you good evening miss good by thank you very much for bringing me the books and come to see tom yes miss said bob moving on a few steps then turning half round he said i ll leave off that trick wi my big thumb if you don t think well on me for it miss � but it ud be a pity it would i couldn t find another trick so good � an what ud be the use o a big thumb it might as well ha been thus exalted into bob s directing laughed s the mill on thb in spite of herself at which her s blue eyes too and under these he touched his cap and walked hie days of chivalry are not gone notwithstanding s grand over them they live still in that off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that be shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe bob with the pack on his back had os respectful an adoration for this dark eyed maiden as if he had been a knight in calling aloud on her name as he pricked on to the fight that gleam of merriment soon died away from s face and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper hy contrast she was too even to like answering questions about bob s present of books and she carried them away to her bedroom laying them down there and herself on her one stool without caring to look at them just yet she leaned her cheek against the window and thought that the light hearted bob had a lot much happier than hers s sense of loneliness and utter of joy had deepened with the brightness of advancing spring all the favorite about home which seemed to have done their part with her parents in and her were now mixed up with the home sadness and gathered no smile from the sunshine every affection every the poor child had had was like an aching nerve to her was no music for her any more � no piano no voices no delicious instruments with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange through her frame and of all her school life there was nothing left her now but her little collection of school books which she turned over with a sickening sense that she knew them all and they were all barren of comfort even at school she had often wished for books with more in them every thing she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that snapped immediately and now without the charm of t was mere so were the hard dry questions on christian doctrine there was no flavor in them � no strength sometimes thought she could have been contented with absorbing fancies if she could have had all scott s novels and all s poems then perhaps she might have found happiness enough to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life and yet they were hardly what she wanted she could make dream worlds of her own but no dream world would satisfy her now she wanted some explanation of this hard real life the unhappy father the mill ok the seated at the dull st table the childish bewildered mother the little sordid tasks that filled the hours or the more oppressive of weary leisure the need of some tender love the cruel sense that tom didn t mind what she thought or felt and that they were no longer together the of all pleasant things that had come to her more than to others � she wanted some key that would enable her to understand and in understanding endure the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart if she had been taught real learning and wisdom such as great men knew she thought she should have held the secrets of life if she had only books that she might learn for herself what wise men knew saints and had never interested so much as and poets she knew little of saints and and had gathered as a general result of her teaching that they were a temporary sion against the spread of and had all died at in one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten tom s school books which had been sent home in his trunk but she found the 