Now, if I went on stringing around my neck all the letters and gifts I received, I should some day have as many trophies about my person as a wild Indian--only I should not take the pride in displaying them that he did. So I decided to lock up my pretty sparkling heart in my desk, and to be content with the less showy pendant I already wore. Sarah had seen it, of course--at least she had seen the cover, one evening when I had a cold, and she had brought me a cup of arrowroot, by Mr. Rayner’s orders, while I was undressing. I had seen, by the eager way in which she fixed her great black eyes upon it, that she was dying to know what it contained, and I was mischievously glad that she could not. Mr. Rayner had given me the pendant on Saturday. The next day, when service was over, and we were standing about in the churchyard as usual, before Mr. and Mrs. Rayner’s departure gave Haidee and me the signal to go home, Mr. Laurence Reade left his party and stood looking at the gravestones, until the gradual moving on of the stream of people who were slowly coming out of the porch brought us past him. Then, as Mr. and Mrs. Rayner stopped to speak to some one, Mr. Reade said-- “Haidee, I’ll give you a penny if you can read that epitaph”--pointing to one in worn old-English characters. “Miss Christie, I believe it is as much as you can do; it is more than I can.” And we stepped on to the grass, and Haidee knelt down and slowly spelt it out aloud. Mr. Reade kept his eyes fixed on the inscription as he bent over one side of the tombstone, while I looked at it from the other; but what he said was-- “It seems such a long time since Tuesday.” Tuesday was the day on which he had bought the marbles. I could not laugh over a tombstone before all those people; so I said gravely-- “It is just five days.” “Yes, but they have been such long days,” said he, in a low voice. “Not really,” I answered. “The days are getting shorter and shorter now.” “Don’t you know how long a day seems when you want to see a--a person, and you can’t? But perhaps you see the persons you like best to see every day?” “I like to see my mother best, and she is a long way off,” said I gravely. “Ah, yes, of course! But I wasn’t thinking of one’s family.” “Perhaps you were thinking of the pretty girls who were in your pew last Sunday?” “The Finches--Ethel and Katie? Oh, no, I wasn’t! I see quite enough of them. They’re coming again, too, to the school-treat. Don’t see why they can’t be contented with their own tea-fights. No; I was thinking of somebody quite different. Can’t you guess who?” He was looking at me now, and not at the inscription at all. And in the pause which followed his words I distinctly heard Mr. Rayner’s bright voice saying archly-- “Laurence seems to have a great admiration for our pretty little Miss Christie; doesn’t he, Mrs. Reade?”