"I peeped into your room this afternoon, and you were asleep by your desk."
"You were, I know," assented my little brother. "I saw you way down in the orchard, and you were asleep with your head on the window sill."
I made no reply, but went up to my room as soon as I had finished my supper, and spent the evening in writing my composition. And what do you think it was? Why, just the story of the pin as he told it to me that afternoon. The children wanted to know if it was true, after I had come down from the platform, having been greatly applauded by the audience (the fat author being in it). I replied that, every word of it was true, and went with them to the shore of the brook, where we found the identical stump with the young beech-tree growing beside it. Where was the pin? I do not know. It wasn't there, though, much to my chagrin.
When I got home, the fat author wanted to know if I would let him have my composition for one chapter of his book. I was perfectly willing, but when he showed me the chapter afterward it was headed "A Boy's Dream." And he had it that a boy had gone to sleep on the window-sill, and had dreamed—my composition!
When I returned it to him he asked me what I thought of it.
"I like it."
"And the title?"
I was silent for a moment—then I said,
"Perhaps it is so."
Note to all the Pansies.—In my composition about the pin, I mentioned several interesting things about the early history of his family, etc., which he probably didn't know, or he would have told me. If you would like to know about them, just hunt up the word "pin" in the encyclopædia, and it will tell you.