of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended me. She
looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon Wynnie.

"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been rude. I
didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make it a little
plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would hardly
believe it."

"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.

"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.

I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.

"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I answered,
"if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay your plans
for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not to-morrow's."

"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
suddenly, again looking up in my face.

We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to keep
her pony close up.

"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."

"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I seem
to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've forgotten every