and the apples, and the sandwiches sliced very, very thin. The coldly appraising eye of all High Prairie, Low Prairie, and New Haarlem watched this sparse provender emerge from the ribbon-tied shoe box. She offered him a sandwich. It looked infinitesimal in his great paw. Suddenly all Selina’s agony of embarrassment was swept away, and she was laughing, not wildly or hysterically, but joyously and girlishly. She sank her little white teeth into one of the absurd sandwiches and looked at him, expecting to find him laughing, too. But he wasn’t laughing. He looked very earnest, and his blue eyes were fixed hard on the bit of bread in his hand, and his face was very red and clean-shaven. He bit into the sandwich and chewed it solemnly. And Selina thought: “Why, the dear thing! The great big dear thing! And he might have been eating breast of duck. . . Ten dollars!” Aloud she said, “What made you do it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Then, “You looked so little. And they were making fun. Laughing.” He looked very earnest, and his blue eyes were fixed hard on the sandwich, and his face was very red.
“That’s a very foolish reason for throwing away ten dollars,’” Selina said, severely.
He seemed not to hear her; bit ruminantly into one of the cup cakes. Suddenly: “I can’t hardly write at all, only to sign my name and like that.”
“Read?”
“Only to spell out the words. Anyways I don’t get time for reading. But figuring I wish I knew. ’Rith-
