So, directly after breakfast, she went up to her bedroom, opened her glass-doored bookcase, and, after taking down and putting up volume after volume, she selected two which she thought would be most beneficial and acceptable to her new friend—these were the charming school books: Peter Parley’s First Book of Geography and Peter Parley’s First Book of History, then just coming into use, both profusely illustrated with maps and pictures. She put on her little rough-and-ready gray sack and her felt hat—for it was still chilly on the seaside in early June—took the two books under her arm and left the house. Singing as she tripped along, she hurried blithely down to the breach in the wall, where she found the fisher-boy busily engaged in smoothing that passage by laying the fallen stones a little leveller. “Oh, good-morning, David Lindsay! Will you take me over in your row-boat to see your grandmother this morning?” she asked as she came up. “Oh, yes, indeed I will, and glad to do it!” replied the lad, lifting his torn hat from his black curls and holding out his hand to help her across the broken wall. She sat down on the boat to recover her breath, while he said: “I stayed here last night until ten o’clock, working to finish my nets, and so get time to take you over to-day. And then I came at daybreak this morning, and have been here ever since, so I have earned a holiday.” “Oh, how good of you to take so much trouble for me; but how could you see to do your work, after the sun went down?” “The stars came out. It was one of the brightest starlight nights I ever saw! Besides, netting, you know, is such mere finger-work, that I could almost do it with my eyes shut. Are you ready to go?” “Presently. Sit down here by me, I want to show you something.” The boy seated himself beside her. “Here,” she said, producing the First Book in Geography, and opening upon a page of engravings in sections representing the five races of man. “Oh-h-h!” exclaimed the boy in delight, as he took the volume from her hands and gazed with devouring eyes upon the fascinating page. He had never seen a picture of an Indian, an Ethiopian, a Mongolian, or a Malay in all his life, and now he gazed in a breathless rapture upon these. Pictures were almost unknown to him—the pictures in his grandmother’s old family Bible and the half-a-dozen little illustrations above the fables in Webster’s Spelling Book, being all that he had ever seen. “Oh-h-h, you can’t think how much I do thank you for lending me this splendid book!” he exclaimed, with fervent gratitude. “Oh, indeed, I am ever so much obliged to you for being so pleased with it! It makes me feel so happy, you know! But turn over the next page. Oh, there are ever so many more nice pictures in it!”