ot by broad-slatted outside shutters,
smeared with house-paint to which stuck tiny black hairs from the
paint-brush, like the ordinary frame houses of Joralemon. Instead,
these windows were masked with inside shutters haughtily varnished to
a hard refined brown.

To-day the windows were open, the shutters folded; furniture was being
moved in; and just inside the iron gate a frilly little girl was
playing with a whitewashed conch-shell.

She must have been about ten at that time, since Carl was eight. She
was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean
white muslin with three rows of tucks, immaculate bronze boots, and a
green tam-o'-shanter, but also of a large hair-ribbon, a ribbon sash,
and a silver chain with a large, gold-washed, heart-shaped locket. She
was softly plump, softly gentle of face, softly brown of hair, and
softly pleasant of speech.

"Hello!" said she.

"H'lo!"

"What's your name, little boy?"

"Ain't a little boy. I'm Carl Ericson."

"Oh, are you? I'm----"

"I'm gonna have a shotgun when I'm fifteen." He shyly hurled a stone
at a telegraph-pole to prove that he was not shy.

"My name is Gertie Cowles. I came from Minneapolis. My mamma owns part
of the Joralemon Flour Mill.... Are you a nice boy? We just moved here
and I don't know anybody. Maybe my mamma will let me play with you if
you are a nice boy."

"I jus' soon come play with you. If you play soldiers.... My pa 's the
smartest man in Joralemon. He builded Alex Johnson's house. He's got a
ten-gauge gun."

"Oh.... My mamma 's a widow."

Carl hung by his arms from the gate-pickets while she breathed,
"M-m-m-m-m-m-y!" in admiration at the feat.

"That ain't nothing. I can hang by my knees on a trapeze.... What did
you come from Minneapolis for?"

"We're going to live here," she said.

"Oh."

"I went to the Chicago World's Fair with my mamma this summer."

"Aw, you didn't!"

"I did so. And I saw a teeny engine so small it was in a walnut-shell
and you had to look at it through a magnifying-glass and it kept on
running like anything."

"Huh! that's nothing! Ben Rusk, he went to the World's Fair, too, and
he saw a statchue that was bigger 'n our house and all pure gold. You
didn't see that."

"I did so! And we got cousins in Chicago and we stayed with them, and
Cousin Edgar is a very _prominent_ doctor for eyenear and stummick."

"Aw, Ben Rusk's pa is a doctor, too. And he's got a brother what's
goin