t
of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.

But as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler--a brown
faced boy with flaxen hair--and said to him:

"Come here, little one. Tell me whose house is that?"

The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in shyness,
and half ready for defence, said from behind the inside of his elbow:

"Phoebe's."

"And who," said Barbox Brothers, quite as much embarrassed by his part in
the dialogue as the child could possibly be by his, "is Phoebe?"

To which the child made answer: "Why, Phoebe, of course."

The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, and had
taken his moral measure. He lowered his guard, and rather assumed a tone
with him: as having discovered him to be an unaccustomed person in the
art of polite conversation.

"Phoebe," said the child, "can't be anybobby else but Phoebe. Can she?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Well," returned the child, "then why did you ask me?"

Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took up a new
position.

"What do you do there? Up there in that room where the open window is.
What do you do there?"

"Cool," said the child.

"Eh?"

"Co-o-ol," the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the word
with a fixed look and great emphasis, as much as to say: "What's the use
of your having grown up, if you're such a donkey as not to understand
me?"

"Ah! School, school," said Barbox Brothers. "Yes, yes, yes. And Phoebe
teaches you?"

The child nodded.

"Good boy."

"Tound it out, have you?" said the child.

"Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with twopence, if I gave it
you?"

"Pend it."

The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg to stand
upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great lameness, and
withdrew in a state of humiliation.

But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the cottage, he
acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which was not a nod, not
a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, but was a diffident
compromise between or struggle with all three. The eyes in the face
seemed amused, or cheered, or both, and the lips modestly said: "Good day
to you, sir."

"I find I must stick for a time to Mugby Junction," said Barbox Brothers,
with much gravity, after once more stopping on his return road to look at
the Lines where they went their several ways so quietly. "I can't mak