the top, and into the midst of her awestruck
waiting there was hurled this startling question:--

"Say, miss, where do you s'pose you'll have the funeral? May I come?"

"Ugh! Oh, you horrid little thing!"

Victoria appeared so amazed at the effect of her inquiry that she stared
back into Amy's face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

"Wh-h--why!"

"I shouldn't have said that. But you go right straight back home. Your
mother wants you. I don't. Oh, dear! How could you say it?"

"Why, 'cause I like to go to funerals. I go to every one Ma does. She's
got a real nice 'funeral dress,' an' so have I."

Amy fled. She had never seen anything like little Victoria, and she was
so indignant that she almost forgot her dread of what might lie before
her. She reached the group about the well, who were now utterly silent,
and seemed to be watching with more astonishment than terror something
happening within it.

Amy, also, stretched her neck to see, though she shut her eyes, and
this naturally prevented; nor did she open them till she felt Cleena
clutch the skirt of her frock and heard her exclaim:--

"Faith, but he's the biggest monkey out o' the Zoo! Arrah musha! I'll
teach him scaring folks out o' their wits, an' wastin' good bedclothes
on such havers! Huh!"

For this was the marvel that now presented. Poor, silly Fayette, looking
more foolish and grotesque than ever, climbing upwards into the
daylight, blinking and sputtering, his back against the stones of one
side the shaft, his feet against the other, his hands clutching,
pulling; both feet and hands almost prehensile, like the creature's to
which Cleena had likened him, yet safe, unbruised, and only mud-splashed
and laughing.

With a final, agile movement he reached the top, threw his arms about
the beam, and leaped to the ground beside them. Then he laughed again,
hilariously, uproariously, and not for long.

In Cleena Keegan's indignant soul a plan had been rapidly forming.

"So you'd be givin' us all the terrors, would ye, avick? Sure, a taste
o' the same medicine's good for the doctor as his patient. I'll just
give ye a try of it, an' see what ye say. Hmm, them sheets might ha'
lasted for years, so they might; an' them blankets, my heart!"

Before anybody, least of all the astonished "Bony," could comprehend
what she would be about, Cleena had tripped and thrown the lad to the
ground. She was more powerful than even his boasted muscle, and he quite
unprepared f