me say --"

"I think it would be a lie," said little Lucy, "be-
cause how can I help knowing if she was never here
she couldn't --"

"Oh, well, little Lucy," cried Jim, in despair, still
with tenderness -- how could he be anything but
tender with little Lucy? -- "all I ask is never to say
anything about it."

"If they ask me?"

"Anyway, you can hold your tongue. You know
it isn't wicked to hold your tongue."

Little Lucy absurdly stuck out the pointed tip of
her little red tongue. Then she shook her head
slowly.

"Well," she said, "I will hold my tongue."

This encounter with innocence and logic had left
him worsted. Jim could see no way out of the fact
that his father, the rector, his mother, the rector's
wife, and he, the rector's son, were disgraced by
their relationship to such an unsanctified little soul
as this queer Content Adams.

And yet he looked at the poor lonely little girl, who