Her Friend Littlejohn

young person had made not only in the
ways of the house, but in his very being
and in the material landscape itself. One
of the oddest and most incongruous things
he ever did in his life was to measure W. V.
against a tree and inscribe her initials (her
father always called her by her initials and
she liked that form of her name best), and
his own, and the date, above the score which
marked her height.

The late summer and the early autumn
passed delightfully in this fashion. There
was some talk at intervals of W. V. being
packed, labelled, and despatched “with
care’? to her own woods and oak-men in
the most pleasant suburb of the great
metropolis, but it never came to anything.
Her father was persuaded to spare her just
a little longer. The patter of the little feet,
the chatter of the voluble, cheery voice, had
grown well-nigh indispensable to Littlejohn
and his wife, for though I have confined
myself to Littlejohn’s side of the story, I
would not have it supposed that W. V.’s
charm did not radiate into other lives.

So the cold rain and the drifted leaf, the

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