It ain't a stand no more. Uncle
Meshach owns it."

"Is it a nice place?"

"Now it ain't as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty"--the girl glided
easily over what Vesta thought might be a hard word--"sence the shews
don't stop thar no mour."

"The shoes? What is that?"

"The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis' man in the world.
Did you ever see him?"

Vesta said, "No, dear."

"I saw him," Rhoda said, with a compression of her mouth and a gleam of
her eyes. "He bruke a stone with his fist and Misc Somers kep the
stone, and what do you think it was?"

"Marble?"

"No'm; chork! He jest washed the chork over with a little shell or
varnish or something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn't
the strongest man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him,
she'll tell him so."

"Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda?"

"Oh, it's a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent
like an elefin's back, an' three windows in it--rale dormant windows,
that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of
windows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to
be a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to
it. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. That
rope-walker's a mountin-bank."

"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank--an impostor?"

"Yes'm,"--the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd
break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched
tight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out
every time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin'
else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going
to tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she
ain't afraid."

"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more
jugglers?"

"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the
missionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no
more; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony
outen the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out
to be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is
a-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."

"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house
at Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"

"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live tog