he had to talk with.

Now every day her baby gave her a new surprise. First he began to say
after her the little prayer she repeated for him morning and evening;
then he said it all alone. She had to weep for joy when the little one
began to sing after her the little Summer song she had learned in her own
childhood and had always sung to him, and one day suddenly knew the whole
song from beginning to end and sang one verse after another without
hesitation.

In spite of all the grandmother's trouble and work, the years passed so
quickly to her, that one day when she began to reckon she discovered that
Sami must be fully seven years old. Then she thought it was really time
that he learned something. But suddenly to send the boy to a French
school when he didn't understand a word of French seemed dreadful to her,
for he would be as helpless as a chicken in water. She would rather try,
as well as she possibly could, to teach him herself to read. She thought
it would be very hard but it went quite easily. In a short time, the
youngster knew all his letters, and could even put words together quite
well. That something could be made out of this which he could understand
and which he did not know before was very amusing to him, and he sat over
his reading-book with great eagerness. But to go out with his grandmother
to deliver her mending and to get new work was a still greater pleasure
to him, for nothing pleased him better than roaming through the green
meadows, then stopping at the brook to listen to the birds singing up in
the ash-trees.

The changeable April days had just come to an end and the beaming May sun
shone so warm and alluring that all the flowers looked up to it with
wide-open petals. Mary Ann with Sami by the hand, her big basket on her