I've taken to it a good deal the last few weeks, and I'll tell you why.

It was the week before you ran away that Bob Furniss came up one evening, and for a long time I could not think what he was after.

He brought me a Jack-in-the-green polyanthus and a crimson Bergamot from his mother, and he set them and watered them, and said he 'reckoned flowers was a nice pastime for any one that was afflicted,' but I felt sure he'd got something more to say, and at last it came out.

He is vexed that he used to play truant so at school and never learned anything.

He can't read a newspaper, and he can't write or reckon, and he said he was 'shamed' to go to school and learn among little boys, and he knew I was a good scholar, and he'd come to ask if I would teach him now and then in the evening, and he would work in the garden for me in return.