"He meant to give it to you, really--he bought it for you--but he couldn't when the time came." "Oh, did he tell you?" "It wasn't necessary for him to tell me. I know that boy, I tell you, through and through. Lucy, do you think you could encourage him a little, now and then--be sociable with him--not enough to hurt, of course? You don't know how he'd appreciate the least kindness. He might remember it all his life." "I might pat his hair--he has such nice hair--if he wouldn't know it--but of course he would know it, and when he looks at you, he is so queer--" "Yes, I know; I suppose it is hopeless. Couldn't you even ask him to write in your autograph album?" "Y-e-s--I could, only he'd be sure to write something funny like 'In Memory's wood-box let me be a stick.' He always does write something witty, and I don't much care for ridiculous things in my album; I'm being careful with it." "Well, if he's as witty as _that_ in your album, it will be to mask a bleeding heart. I happen to know that in a former existence he was never even asked to write, though he always hoped he might be." "I'm sorry if you like him, Uncle Maje, but I'm positive that Fatty Budlow is not a boy I could _ever_ feel deeply for. I don't believe our acquaintance will even ripen into friendship," and she looked with profound eyes into the wondrous, opening future. "Of course it won't," I said. "I might have known that. He will continue through the ages to be an impossible boy. Miss Lansdale feels the same way about him. Poor Fatty or Horsehead or whatever they call him stands off and glares at her, and can't say his lesson when he catches her eye--only he seldom does catch it, because she's so busy with other boys of more spirit who crowd about her and snatch hair ribbons and sing 'My lady sleeps' until no one else can." "Do you know Fatty Budlow?" asked my surprised woman child of Miss Lansdale. But that young woman only reached out one foot to point its toe idly at a creeping green worm and turn its vagrant course. The toe was by no means common-sense, and the heel was simply idiotic. "Of course she knows him," I said; "she knows he would give his right hand for her, which is a good deal under the circumstances, and she very properly despises him for it. She'd take her picture away from him if she could." "She wouldn't," said Miss Lansdale, with a gesture of her foot that disconcerted me. "Miss Kate," I said, "I have lived my life in terror of seeing one of those squashy green worms meet a fearful disaster in my presence. Would you mind--" With a fillip of the bronzed toe she sent the amazed worm into a country that must have been utterly strange to it,