Pliny from his sofa chuckled and exclaimed over this explanation: "A straight mark with a little crook to it. Oh, ho!" But the others were absorbed, and bent eagerly over their paper, and thus the horrified Mrs. Hastings found them on her return from the parlor, the offshoot from a cellar rum hole bending his curly head close beside _her daughter's_! She exclaimed in indignant astonishment: "Dora Hastings!" And eager, innocent Dora hastened to make answer: "Mamma, he can make the two t's; the capital and the other, you know; and he has them both on this piece of paper. Just see, mamma." "Say, now," interrupted Tode, "I've decided to do them all. You learn me, will you? I'm to come up here every night after this with the seven o'clock mail. Just you make a letter on a paper for me, the big fellow, and the little one, you know, and I'll work at it off and on the next day, and have it ready for you at night. Will you do it? Come now." Pliny raised himself on one elbow, his face full of interest: "Take a figure, Tode, with your letters; figures are a great deal sharper than letters. I'll make one a night for you." "All right," said Tode. "I don't mind working in a figure now and then. A fellow might need to use 'em." "Mamma," said Dora, "may I? I should so love to; it would be real teaching, you know. He is fifteen years old, and he don't know how to write, and it won't take one little minute of my time. Oh please yes, mamma." What _could_ the elegant Mrs. Hastings say? What was there to say to so simple, original, yet so absurd a request? Still she was annoyed, and looked it, but she did not speak it, and Tode was not sensitive to looks, or words either, for that matter, and moved with a brisker, more business-like step back to the hotel, and someway felt an inch taller, for was he not to have a new letter and a figure every evening, and did he not know how to make two t's? [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. WHICH SHALL PROSPER, THIS OR THAT? The Rev. John Birge stood before the window in his cosy little study, and drummed disconsolately and dismally on the pane. Without there was a genuine carnival among the elements, a mingling of snow and rain, which became ice almost as it fell, and about which a regular northeast wind was blustering. The Rev. John looked, and drummed, and knitted his brows, and finally turned abruptly to little Mrs. John, who sat in the smallest rocking-chair, toasting her feet on the hearth. "Now, Emma, isn't it strange that of all the evenings in the week Thursday should be the one so constantly stormy? This is the third one in succession that has been so unpleasant that very few could get out." This sentence was delivered in a half-impatient, half-desponding tone; and Mrs. John took time to consider before she answered, soothingly: