She

She was by now thoroughly aroused, and waited eagerly for Elizabeth's straight serving in order to recoup. But, though Elizabeth attempted neither cut nor curve, there was considerable speed in her serve, and much precision. varied the serve to the right and left of the court with an occasional slow ball that was extremely irritating. It dropped lightly over the net, and was very difficult to return for one who was waiting far back for a swift ball. It bounced low, and Nance, if she reached it, was pretty sure to return it out of bounds, because of her impetuosity. In the process, she not only lost her point, but more and more of her self-control. In this way, Elizabeth actually won the second game. gave her such self-confidence that in the third game, where Nance steadied down a little, she lost only by a single point, and this was contested back and forth in a hard-fought rally.

This

"Good, Nance!" exclaimed Elizabeth, as her opponent finally succeeded in passing her.

A gentle handclapping came from the sidelines, and she looked around to see there a lighthaired young man, whom, at first, she did not recognize. He stepped forward.

"I beg pardon," he said with a smile. "May I interrupt the game long enough to inquire if you have completely recovered?"

"Recovered?" stammered Elizabeth.

"It's rather a foolish question, is n't it?" he faltered, as he noted her red cheeks. "I should have called before if I had not been away."

It was not until then that Elizabeth brought to mind all the episode of the frightened horses at the country club.

"Oh! Mr. Crawford!" she laughed, extending her hand. "I remember now. But I was n't hurt at all."

He still looked so solicitous that, for a moment, Elizabeth felt concerned that she had received no injury worthy of his anxiety. There was something foreign in his deferential courtesy and in the slight stoop of his shoulders.

"I am very glad," he answered. "I was n't told that the horses were afraid of automobiles."

Elizabeth introduced the new-comer to Nance. "I must n't interrupt your game," he apologized, with a bow.

"Our games are never finished," answered Elizabeth. "Will you not come to the house and meet Mrs. Trumbull?"

He hesitated.

while the rose vine over the porch made it stand out like a cool oasis among the formal houses to be seen beyond.

"May I?" he asked.

Elizabeth led the way across the fields, and, as she saw him still studying the cottage, she said: "It's a very old place. It was my mother's." "Then I should n't call that very old," he answered.

"It must be twenty-five years old, at least." "Oh!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You don't call that old-really?"

"What would you call old?"

"Why-five hundred years," he answered. "But the Pilgrims had n't come over then, so a house could n't be that old!" she exclaimed. "I did n't think of that," he answered with a smile.

Mrs. Trumbull was somewhat surprised to see the girls returning with a stranger, but, as soon as Elizabeth explained, the good lady greeted the lad cordially.

"Beth never told me a word about that scrape," said Mrs. Trumbull. "I s'pose she misses death by a hair a dozen times a day that I don't know anything about. It all comes of having those fool automobiles round loose."

"I like horses better myself," answered Crawford.

"Then you must have been brought up in the country," declared Mrs. Trumbull. "I was," he admitted.

The girls excused themselves for a few moments to put their hair in order after their exercise; but Mrs. Trumbull, with her old-fashioned and informal hospitality to the guest who "happens in," insisted that he should remain and share with them the lemonade and cake which she always had ready for the girls after the game. He watched her with interest as she made her preparations.

"You don't happen to be a State of Maine boy, do you?" she asked, with good-natured curiosity. "No," he answered.

"Vermont, perhaps?"

"No," he answered. "I'm an Englishman." "An Englishman!" she exclaimed in astonish

ment.

"Yes," he nodded. "I came over here for the summer, to see something of America. I 'm going back to-morrow."

"Well, well, well!" she murmured, quite con

He glanced in that direction with some surprise. A bed of many-colored zinnias lent a touch of color to the quiet gray of the house,

you visited Maine?"

He shook his head.

"I spent most of my time in New York and Chicago, and the rest of it on trains."

"Land alive!" she protested, "do you call that seeing America!"

"I don't know," he replied wearily. "At any rate, I can't say that I 'm keen about what I saw. It all seems so new."

He gave a quick glance around the room. "Do you know," he added impulsively, "I like it here better than any place I 've been."

"Well, I reckon this is better than some places, anyhow," she answered proudly. "And it's all

"No," laughed Elizabeth, "you saved her from beating herself."

"I'd like to play with both of you," he assured them, "only I 'm afraid I can't. You see, I sail to-morrow."

"Back to England, where he lives," put in Mrs. Trumbull, a little proud of having already learned the fact.

"Then that 's why you did n't think the house was very old!" exclaimed Elizabeth.

due to Beth. She likes it better than 'The Towers, though she 's lived here only a few months."

"It seems very homelike," he said, boyishly. "I suppose that 's because I found most of my friends living in houses like hotels."

"Like the big house yonder?" she asked. "Yes," he laughed, "I was afraid, at first, that Miss Churchill lived there."

"No, siree!" answered Mrs. Trumbull. "She lives right here."

At this point Beth and Nance returned, and the conversation became more general. They talked of tennis, and found that Crawford played.

"You must come out some day and have a set with Nance," said Elizabeth.

"It really does n't seem very old compared with buildings that have been standing for four or five hundred years, does it?" he asked.

"Five hundred years!" exclaimed Mrs. Trumbull. "I must say that I should n't want to undertake keeping a house neat which was that old. Would you, Beth?"

Mr. Crawford laughed.

"You must come over sometime and see how we do it. You have visited England?"

"Once," answered Elizabeth; "but it seems as though we were either in hotels or trains most of the time."

"I know, I know," he replied quickly. "That's the trouble with visiting other countries, I fancy. But when you come again will you let me show you another side of it?"

"Thank you," answered Elizabeth.

"And perhaps we can have our game over there," he added with a smile.

It was almost supper-time before he rose to go, and then it was with evident reluctance. This was one of those quick friendships which seem to cover months in a few hours. He left, promising to write, and exacting a promise from Mrs. Trumbull that if she ever visited England, she would let him know.

"But," she assured him, "I 'm too set, at my age, to go skylarkin' around the world."

So, in a single afternoon, the young stranger came and went. But as Mrs. Trumbull said to Elizabeth and Nance, who were eagerly discussing who he might be, "he 's the kind of lad that makes you feel that you are bound to see him

They trail through the alley and mart

To this Palace of Tomes

Wee urchins, red-hatted and swart
As their underworld gnomes,
And hundreds of quaint little maids
Wearing ribands of green
Or scarlet on duplicate braids,
Quick-eyed, orderly, clean,
And silent.

Some take from the shelves

Of the volumes a-row
Those legends of goblins and elves
That we loved long ago;

Yet more choose the stories of men
Whom a nation reveres -
Of Lincoln and Washington; then
Of the bold pioneers

Who plowed in a blood-sprinkled sod,
Whose strong hands caused to rise
That Temple which these, under God,
Yet shall rear. to the skies!

ARTHUR GUITERMAN.

A DECREPIT book, like a fire-engine horse too old to pull the truck, like a faithful "mount" of the traffic police put out of service, is a book too old to circulate. There used to be a time in the lives of boys and girls when they had to rummage about for themselves among musty books for something to read, and to find fairy tales in the

midst of ponderous tomes was like finding a sweet rose in the forest primeval. More often would the time be spent in looking over some startling pictures in the books for grown people, pictures that one would remember for years after, just as Charles Lamb remembered the Stackhouse Bible, or Coleridge the bulgy pantaloons of the queer gentlemen in "The Arabian Nights."

The American boy and girl had often to rummage in the same way. "The New England Primer" was their chief delight, and we are told that the reason this little book is so rare to-day is because of its great popularity and its constant use in the past. But the older children read things far beyond their years; Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, were John Marshall's chief relish before he was twelve; and nearly all boys were well versed in the classics. But by those who were not so fortunate as to be near a libr books were had only after a tramp of miles, then they did not ask for the kind of books boys and girls ask for to-day. Lincoln borrowe "Esop's Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progre and "Robinson Crusoe"; he read the diction

page by page; he pored over the statutes of Indiana. He was ravenous to read, but there was no library near him.

Now all this has changed; perhaps in no period of the world's history is there better opportunity for girls and boys to have all the books they want. In most libraries to-day there are special rooms for them in which all manner of good reading is spread upon the shelves. There are nearly fifteen thousand places in New York alone where books may be had free of charge. There is hardly a home of a boy or girl in the city more than a mile away from a library; and if, by chance, in certain sections of a crowded city, the children do not belong to a library, then clubs are formed and boxes of books are sent to them, and distributed in the afternoon from one of the member's homes.

One day, in the vestibule of a children's library, I noticed a bench. A row of boys and girls sat upon it, and I wondered what they were doing. They were busy watching the eager. crowd inside; from their position they saw a line of readers drawing out books, another line returning them. It was a busy room-a boy in a corner looking over a college story, a girl in another lost in some adventure. Any question they might ask was answered by the librarian, whose special duty is to know the books and to tell which are best to read. If a boy wants some sea stories, she mentions a whole list; if a girl is anxious for a summer tale, she can

The general idea seems to be that a library is, on the one hand, a kind of storehouse for books, and, on the other, a place from which books may be drawn. But this is only one part of what a library means. It is also a room in which one may sit and read, and that is a great thing in the lives of boys and girls who have no such luxury at home; it is a place in which one should cultivate the habit of good reading, in which to have a good time with a book means to enter heartily