many cop--copper shillings--as his--pockets would hold.'"

"So that's it, is it?" Ken said. "Begin at the beginning, and let's hear
it all."

"Ken," said his mother, "that's in the back of the book. You shouldn't
encourage him to read things Miss Bolton hasn't given him."

"It'll do him just as much good to read that, as that silly stuff at the
beginning. Phil and I always read things we weren't supposed to have
reached."

"But for him--" Mrs. Sturgis murmured; "you and Phil were different, Ken.
Oh, well,--"

For Kirk had turned back several broad pages, and began:

"There came a soldier marching along the highroad--one, two! one,
two!..."

Little by little the March twilight settled deeper over the room. There
was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where
the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came
the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the tale of "The Tinder-Box"
progressed.

It was the first time that he had ever read aloud anything so ambitious,
and his hearers sat listening with some emotion--his mother filled with
thankfulness that he had at last the key to a vast world which he now
might open at a touch; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in the