again, and implored her devoted "Dad" to let her grow up in ignorance,
protesting passionately that she did not want puffs on her head, and
heels on her shoes, and whalebones about her waist. That she didn't
care whether X plus Y equaled Z, or not, and that going to church and
saying the same thing a dozen times, drove all ideas of religion out
of her head. She would study at home, she declared, anything,
everything he suggested, if only she could do it, in her own way, out
of doors.

So the sorely puzzled Colonel had procured her the necessary text-
books, and she had plunged into her original method of self-education.
She usually fought out her mathematical battles down by the river,
using a stick on the sand for her calculations; history she studied in
the fork of an old elm, declaiming the most dramatic episodes aloud,
to the edification of the sparrows.

In the long winter months her favorite haunt was a little unused room
over the front hall, traditionally known as the library. Its only
possible excuse for the name was its one piece of furniture, a
battered secretary containing a small collection of musty volumes that
did credit to the taste of some long-departed Carsey.

Miss Lady had discovered the library in her paper-doll days, and had
ruthlessly clipped small bonneted ladies with flounced skirts from
magazines that dated back to the first year of publication. Later she
had discovered that some of the ladies had jokes on their backs, or
rather pieces of jokes, the rest of which she hunted up in the old
magazines. It was an easy step from the magazines to the books, and in
time she knew them all, from the little dog-eared copy of Horace in
the upper left-hand corner, to the fat Don Quixote in the lower right.