I have seen precocious children that astonished or made jealous as the case might be. How they did sing, play the banjo, or speak! One such boy I remember--we were all sure he would grow to be an orator who would shake the nation. I watched him, and saw him to-day presiding at the second chair in Chadduck’s tonsorial palace, and noted the Ciceronian wave of his hand as he shouted the legend, “Next gentleman--shave.” Walking across a prairie in Iowa with a friend, we suddenly found ourselves going through a miniature grove, where the highest trees did not reach my shoulders. I examined the leaves and found the trees to be black-oak of the most perfect type. “What beautiful young trees! How they will grow and grow and put out their roots in every direction, and search the very bowels of the earth for the food and sustenance they need! How they will toss their branches in defiance to the storm, and be a refuge and defence for the wearied traveler! How----” “Stop that gush, will you please!” said my companion. “These are only scrub-oaks and will not be any larger if they live a hundred years.” Possibly this grove explains why the average man of sixty is no wiser and no better than the average man of forty--it is Arrested Development. My good mother is only a fine type of Arrested Development. CHAPTER III. A LITTLE LOCAL HISTORY. With my woman’s intuition I knew all just from the hint John gave. My father a week before had gone to Montreal, saying he would be back Wednesday. It was now Friday and he had not returned. I remember the two men who had come to “take an inventory for the ‘Tax Office,’” one said, and he winked at the other. How they walked through the house with their hats on and joked each other as they tried the piano! I saw it all! My father had lost money and had given a chattel mortgage on the furniture, having first raised all the money he could on the real estate. I asked my mother if she remembered giving the mortgage, and she looked at me, grieved and surprised, saying: “Why, of course not, dear. I always signed the papers he brought me. Do you think it a woman’s place to ask questions about business?”