. And every morning Miss Bailey handed her Monitor
of the Gold Fish Bowl his princely stipend, adding to it from time to
time some fruit or other uncontaminated food, for Morris was religiously
the strictest of the strict, and could have given cards and spades to
many a minor rabbi on the intricacies of Kosher law.

The Saturday after his mother's departure Morris spent in the enlivening
companionship of the antiquated Rover, a collie who no longer roved
farther than his own back yard, and who accepted Morris's frank
admiration with a noble condescension and a few rheumatic gambols. Miss
Bailey's mother was also hospitable, and her sister did what she could
to amuse the quaint little child with the big eyes, the soft voice, and
the pretty foreign manners. But Morris preferred Rover to any of them,
except perhaps the cook, who allowed him to prepare a luncheon for
himself after his own little rites.

Everything had seemed so pleasant and so successful that Miss Bailey
looked upon a repetition of this visit as a matter of course, and was
greatly surprised on the succeeding Friday afternoon when the Monitor of
the Gold Fish Bowl said that he intended to spend the next day at home.

"Oh, no!" she remonstrated, "you mustn't stay at home. I'm going to take
you out to the Park and we are going to have all kinds of fun. Wouldn't
you rather go and see the lions and the elephants with me than stay at
home all by yourself?"

For some space Morris was a prey to silence, then he managed by a
consuming effort:

"I ain't by mineself."

"Has your father come home?" said Teacher.

"No, ma'am."

"And surely it's not a neighbor. You remember what your mother said
about the neighbors, how you were not to let them in."

"It ain't neighbors," said Morris.

"Then who--?" began Miss Bailey.

Morris raised his eyes to hers, his beautiful, black, pleading eyes,
praying for the understanding and the sympathy which had never failed
him yet. "It's a friend," he answered.

"Nathan Spiderwitz?" she asked.

Morris shook his head, and gave Teacher to understand that the Monitor
of the Window Boxes came under the ban of neighbor.

"Well, who is it, dearest?" she asked again. "Is it any one that I
know?"

"No, ma'am."

"None of the boys in the school?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you known him long?"

"No, ma'am."

"Does your mother know him?"

"Oh, Teacher, _no_, ma'am! mine mamma don't know him."

"Well, where did you meet him?"