Possibly he can.' Resuming her pen, she wrote: 'Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but something solid--something historical, which she can remember and talk about with you.' In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions, Harold wrote as follows: 'I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on Maude as you advised--have read her fifty pages of Grote's History of Greece; but when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps; at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest.

So I have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading to her Tennyson's poems.

Have read the May Queen four times, until I do believe she knows it by heart.

She has a great liking for the last portion of it, especially the lines: "I shall not forget you, mother: I shall hear you when you pass, With your feet above my head In the long and pleasant grass." 'I saw her cry one day when I read that to her.

Poor little Maude! She is very frail, but no one seems to think her in danger, she has so brilliant a color, and always seems so bright.' Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with an increased sense of comfort.