"Well, now you may read _Moral Tales_. It was your father's book, and you may have it if you'll take care of it. I'll cover it for you to-morrow." "Oh, thank you," said the boy. She opened her own volume where a worked marker kept the place, and began to read. But Ethan was too excited to follow suit. He sat looking at her, and about the room. The pressed four-leaved clover presently fell out of her book on to the footstool. He picked it up carefully and handed it to her. "Ah!" she ejaculated, smiling, and turning back to the beginning of the volume, where she replaced the leaf. But Ethan had watched the discreet turning of yellowed pages. "Why, your Bible is _full_ of clovers," he said. "This is not the Bible, it is Lockhart's Scott," she answered. "And as for the four-leaved clovers, I find them as I walk about in the evenings." "I suppose you look for them because they're so lucky?" "Nonsense! of course not. They just look up at me from the grass." Ethan felt dashed a little, but he noticed how the long, slim fingers held the book so that no more clovers should fall out. She must think a good deal of them, he concluded. Many an older person under the circumstances would have felt it incumbent upon her to entertain the child; but while no doubt some young people might have been made happier by being noticed more, there are those, especially the shy and sensitive ones, who are all the better for a little wholesome letting alone. It is evident that the officious attempts of many well-meaning adults to amuse, even if it involve making mountebanks of themselves, are ofttimes destined to humiliation. We have all seen children solemnly regarding grown-up capers with the air of philosophers looking down with scorn upon an antic world. There was something in his grandmother's calm pursuit of her usual routine that set the child at ease. If she had gone obviously out of her way to make herself agreeable to him, he, with the perversity of his type, would have been more on his guard against her blandishments.