"Please, Daddy Merle, will you hold it for me?"
Relieved of their burden, the hands disappeared. Merle examined the package with interest. It was the back of an old exercise book converted into a portfolio and was full of papers. He turned it over curiously. On the other side was a white label. The curate smiled as he read the inscription in childish capitals, "The Misforchins of Reginal," by An Petronia Pottle.
An Petronia's novel! It so happened that this was the first time Merle had beheld the little novelist's autograph. "What a funny way to spell Anne!" he said half-aloud.
"That's the way I always spell it, Daddy Merle." He started at the sound of An Petronia's voice. He had not heard her as she slipped out of the tree. Now she was standing close beside him and in her hands was something small wrapped in white tissue paper.
There was a timid challenge in the child's voice, the first hint of the future conflict between artist and critic.
"'An' is the very first word in my spelling-book," she hurried on, "A N—an. It's the same name, Daddy Merle, only in the speller it's An Apple and I'm An Pottle."
There was no disputing such logic as this, accompanied as it was by a rainy look that must be instantly kissed away from An Petronia's wide blue eyes.
"My dear," he said, and if the truth must be told there was a hint of rain in the curate's own eyes, "An is your very own name and the way you spell it is the sweetest and dearest way in all the world, and you must never spell it any other way," which was the first, last and only concession to the "Dire Heresy of Spelling Reform" ever made by the Reverend Horatio Merle.
They were seated once more on the soft moss by the side of the four evangelists, who greeted them with undiminished apostolic serenity. An Petronia had undone the tape that bound her portfolio and was turning over the contents, pieces of paper in various sizes, from half sheets of note to torn scraps of wrapping paper, covered on both sides with the large, irregular handwriting of the budding novelist. By her side sat the curate, his gray head bent over the picture which An Petronia, after unfolding its tissue paper wrappings, had with heroically suppressed misgivings intrusted to his hands. It was her most precious possession, a photograph in a tarnished gilt frame from a painting of Christ washing the feet of the apostles. Below the picture was printed a text from the Gospel of Saint John, xiii., 15:
FOR I HAVE GIVEN YOU AN
EXAMPLE, THAT YE SHOULD
DO AS I HAVE DONE TO
YOU.