to walk on his hands in a manner that caused acute envy to rankle in the
bosom of every boy in the neighborhood. Also, as is most unusual among
boys of whatever station, color or instinct, he was self-sacrificing, and
more than generous, and loyal to a fault.

Kathryn Blair was all that might have been expected of a daughter of her
father and mother. Had you known them, it were difficult to describe
further. You have been told that she was lithe, and dainty and very
pretty. And she was feminine, very, and yet not unhoydenish; for she
played much with Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake. She was natural, and
unaffected, and whole-souled and buoyant, quick to laughter, quick to
tears, with an inexhaustible fund of merriment, and of sympathy.

Of an afternoon, in early December, they lay, these three young animals,
sprawling upon the great room in Blake's house--the room that had been
made for play. The gentle rays of the early-setting sun streamed in
through the broad windows upon a tumbled heap of discarded playthings,
and upon a floor strewn with that which might have appeared to be
drifting snow but which in reality was feathers; for there had been a
fierce pillow fight; and one of the pillows, under the pressure of
rolling little bodies, had burst. Its shrunken shape lay in a far corner
of the room, rumpled, empty, a husk of the plump thing that it had been
but a short time before.

Kathryn Blair, with slender, stockinged legs thrust out before her, was
picking from the tangled masses of her gold-brown hair little clinging
bits of down. Tom Blake, beside her lay flat upon his back; and by him,
was Jack Schuyler, his head resting upon the heaving diaphragm of the
other.