lap, used to get its back up and spit at the postmaster's yellow hound.

"I never wished to come unless you called me first," he said frankly.

"What?" she said, in her half playful, half reproachful, but wholly
caressing way. "You mean to say you would never come to see me unless I
sent for you? Oh, Leon! and you'd abandon me in that way?"

But Leonidas was set in his own boyish superstition. "I'd just delight
in being sent for by you any time, Mrs. Burroughs, and you kin always
find me," he said shyly, but doggedly; "but"--He stopped.

"What an opinionated young gentleman! Well, I see I must do all the
courting. So consider that I sent for you this morning. I've got another
letter for you to mail." She put her hand to her breast, and out of the
pretty frillings of her frock produced, as before, with the same faint
perfume of violets, a letter like the first. But it was unsealed. "Now,
listen, Leon; we are going to be great friends--you and I." Leonidas
felt his cheeks glowing. "You are going to do me another great favor,
and we are going to have a little fun and a great secret all by our own
selves. Now, first, have you any correspondent--you know--any one who
writes to you--any boy or girl--from San Francisco?"

Leonidas's cheeks grew redder--alas! from a less happy consciousness. He
never received any letters; nobody ever wrote to him. He was obliged to
make this shameful admission.

Mrs. Burroughs looked thoughtful. "But you have some friend in San
Francisco--some one who MIGHT write to you?" she suggested pleasantly.