der comely, but exceedingly like
what we are disposed to regard as awful and Satanic,--to wit, a long
hooked nose, sunken cheeks, black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took
something wizard-like and mystical from the large spectacles through
which they shone; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in
which a physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewdness, and
some closeness, complete the picture. Imagine this figure, grotesque,
peregrinate, and to the eye of a peasant certainly diabolical; then
perch it on the stile in the midst of those green English fields, and
in sight of that primitive English village; there let it sit straddling,
its long legs dangling down, a short German pipe emitting clouds from
one corner of those sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the
spectacles full upon the parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield. Lenny
Fairfield looked exceedingly frightened.

"Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca," said Mr. Dale, smiling, "you come in
good time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;" and herewith the
parson explained the case, and put the question, "Ought Lenny Fairfield
to have the sixpence, or ought he not?"

"Cospetto!" said the doctor, "if the hen would but hold her tongue,
nobody would know that she had laid an egg."

CHAPTER V.

"Granted," said the parson; "but what follows? The saying is good, but I
don't see the application."

"A thousand pardons!" replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of
an Italian; "but it seems to me that if you had given the sixpence to
the fanciullo, that is, to this good little boy, without telling him the
story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into
this awkward dilemma."

"But, my dear sir," whispered the parson, mildly, as he inclined his
lips to the doctor's ear, "I should then have lost the opportunity of
inculcating a moral lesson--you understand?"

Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth,
and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical,--a whiff
peculiar to your philosophical smoker, a whiff that implied the most
absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the
parson's moral lesson.

"Still you have not given us your decision," said the parson, after a
pause.

The doctor withdrew the pipe. "Cospetto!" said he,--"he who scrubs the
head of an ass wastes his soap."

"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverb