would laugh and turn away, trying to avoid me; and I can remember just how he looked at Mother as they exchanged glances. I can’t recall how they answered me, but think they told me I would know when I was older. (I never remember being told about storks bringing babies, though I do remember someone saying the Doctor brought them, and that God sent them.) But that scene is very vivid to me; and afterward, when I began to know, though imperfectly, the answer to my question, I thought of how I had sat and coaxed Father to tell me. I would like to know just how old I was when this question first seemed so important to me. I recall when still very small, though later than this, being in the yard and digging in the ground when Brother and some older boys, going by, asked what we were doing. “Digging for babies,” we said, and it seems as though I can remember the smile that passed between Brother and the boys as they ran off shouting derisively, “Digging for babies!” That must have been in the days when we used earnestly to try to dig down to China. Although asking my father this question is one of my earliest recollections, I think the very earliest is that of my first day in school. I can remember just how I trotted along by my brother’s side; how my starched skirts stood out proudly, and how my heart swelled with excitement when, at the sound of the “first bell,” I started off to school. Arthur was very nice to me, and granted permission (!) to two of the bigger girls to let me sit between them. I recall the delicious feeling of being the object of interest in the little flock, and how they petted and entertained me. But the most wonderful thing was a little wire frame which the teacher let me take to amuse myself with--a frame with coloured balls big as cranberries, which could be moved back and forth on the wires. Not long after I began going to school regularly, and that little frame (years later I learned it was called an _abacus_) was given out as a reward of merit. I can see now the look of blushing pride mantling the cheeks of the favoured pupils as they marched from the teacher’s desk back to their seats bearing the coveted trophy. One evening shortly after my first day in school, we were startled by the alarm of fire, and saw the flames coming from the direction of the Academy. “Goody, Goody!” shouted some boys in the street, “We won’t have to go to school any more!” But I cried as though my heart would break, until a neighbour came down the hill and told us it was some unimportant building farther away.