ur heads whirled. If
Jack Battle came along, Rebecca would jump down primly and run in, for
Jack was unknown in the meeting-house, and the meeting-house was
Rebecca's measure of the whole world.

One day Jack lingered. He was carrying something tenderly in a red
cambric handkerchief.

"Where is Mistress Hortense?" he asked sheepishly.

"That silly French woman keeps her caged like a squirrel."

Little Jack began tittering and giggling.

"Why--that's what I have here," he explained, slipping a bundle of soft
fur in my hand.

"It's tame! It's for Hortense," said he.

"Why don't you take it to her, Jack?"

"Take it to her?" reiterated he in a daze. "As long as she gets it,
what does it matter who takes it?"

With that, he was off across the marshy commons, leaving the squirrel
in my hand.

Forgetting lessons, I ran to M. Picot's house. That governess answered
the knocker.

"From Jack Battle to Mistress Hortense!"

And I proffered the squirrel.

Though she smirked a world of thanks, she would not take it. Then
Hortense came dancing down the hall.

"Am I not grown tall?" she asked, mischievously shaking her curls.

"No," said I, looking down to her feet cased in those high slippers
French ladies then wore, "'tis your heels!"

And we all laughed. Catching sight of the squirrel, Hortense snatched
it up with caresses against her neck, and the French governess
sputtered out something of which I knew only the word "beau."

"Jack is no beau, mademoiselle," said I loftily. "Pah! He's a wharf
lad."

I had thought Hortense would die in fits.

"Mademoiselle means the squirrel, Ramsay," she said, choking, her
handkerchief to her lips. "Tell Jack thanks, with my love," she
called, floating back up the stairs.

And the governess set to laughing in the pleasant French way that
shakes all over and has no spite. Emboldened, I asked why Hortense
could not play with us any more. Hortense, she explained, was become
too big to prank on the commons.

"Faith, mademoiselle," said I ruefully, "an she mayn't play war on the
commons, what may she play?"

"Beau!" teases mademoiselle, perking her lips saucily; and she shut the
door in my face.

It seemed a silly answer enough, but it put a notion in a lad's head.
I would try it on Rebecca.

When I re-entered the window, the dominie still slept. Rebecca, the
demure monkey, bent over her lesson book as innocently as though there
were no turnstiles.

"Rebec