"I like you ever so much, Jean; but, honestly, I like Molly better, when she's nice, for we've always been together; and I don't want these dreadful girls to come in between us." "I don't believe they will, any more than Florence and I do," said Jean soothingly. At the mention of Florence's name, Polly straightened up, and looked right into Jean's eyes. "Jean Dwight," said she, "if you'll never, never tell, I am going to say something to you that I never told anybody before." "What is it?" asked Jean curiously. "You promise not to tell?" "Why, of course, if you don't want me to." "Well," said Polly, in a whisper, "I think Florence is a perfect little flat. There! I suppose mamma would say I was as bad as Miss Bean, with all her gossip, but I can't help it, it's true. But don't let's talk about it any more, it makes me so cross. Perhaps they won't come, anyway." "Here comes Alan," said Jean, glancing up as the boy turned in at the gate; "maybe he can tell us something about them." In fact, the lad had come to see Polly for no other purpose than to talk the matter over with her, for Polly was his truest friend in the V, and the two children exchanged confidences with the same simple good-fellowship they might have shown, had they both been girls. Polly never snubbed Alan because he was younger, as Molly did, but invariably stood as his champion when the other girls scolded him, and tried to send him away; and Alan, on his side, never rubbed Polly the wrong way, but respected her quick temper. Of course he teased her, as every natural boy teases the girls with whom he is thrown; but it was a gay, good-natured sort of teasing that never irritated Polly in the least. During his long, rheumatic fever of the winter before, she had been a most devoted friend, dropping in to see him at all sorts of odd hours, to amuse him with her merry nonsense, and had greatly disgusted the girls by frankly announcing her preference for his society over their own. And Alan returned the compliment with interest, declaring that he would "rather have Poll in one of her tantrums than the rest of them with all their best manners." He came deliberately across the lawn, with his black and white striped cap cocked on the very back of his head, and his hands in the side pockets of his gray coat, and calmly disregarding the curiosity of the girls, he made no attempt to speak until he had comfortably settled himself on the grass at their feet. "Well," he inquired at length, after he had arranged himself to his liking, with his hands clasped under his yellow head; "what is it you want to know?" "Everything," demanded Polly, comprehensively. "All right," he answered, lazily shutting his eyes. "The earth is the planet on which we live, and is about twenty-five thousand miles round; a decimal fraction is one whose denominator is ten, one hundred, one thousand, or and so forth; America was discovered in--"