with Raymond Mortimer unless he was annoyingly obtrusive or
disobedient. But the first domestic records of her arrival, kept
naturally enough by Miss Greene, whose lonely spinster heart was the
boy's domestic refuge, went back to a day in June when he was five. He
was in his nursery and she in an adjoining room, the communicating
door of which was open. She had heard him in the nursery talking to
himself, as she supposed, for a long time. At last his voice took on a
note of childish irritation, and she distinctly heard his words.

"But it won't be right that way," he was saying, earnestly. "Don't you
see it won't be right that way? There won't be nothing to hold up the
top."

There was a long silence, in the midst of which Miss Greene stole
cautiously to the nursery door and looked in. The boy was on his knees
on the floor, an ambitious structure of blocks before him, which he
had evidently drawn back to contemplate. His eyes were turned from it,
however, and his head was bent a little to the left. He wore a look of
great attention and annoyance. He seemed to be listening to a
prolonged argument.

"All right," he said, at last. "I'll do it. But it ain't right, and
you'll be sorry when you see it fall." He hurriedly rearranged the
block structure, adding to the tremulously soaring tower on the left
side. True to his prediction, it fell with a crash, destroying other
parts of the edifice in its downfall. The boy turned on his unseen
companion a face in which triumph and disgust were equally blended.
"There, now!" he taunted; "didn't I tell you so, Lily Bell? But you
never will b'lieve what I say--jes like girls!"