e washed them and put them over the fire to boil with a
regularity due to his fear of the strap. But he hated them. (Likewise he
pitied them--because they seemed such little, old creatures, and grew in
that shriveled way which reminded him somehow of Grandpa.) What he
longed for was fresh fruit, which he got only at long intervals, this
when Cis carried home to him a few cherries in the bottom of a paper
bag, or part of an apple which was generously specked, and so well on
its way to ruin, or shared the half of a lemon, which the two sucked,
turn about, all such being the gifts of a certain old gentleman with a
wooden leg who carried on a thriving trade in the vicinity of the
nearest public school. But the periods between the contributions were so
long, and the amount of fruit consumed was so small, that Johnnie was
never even a quarter satisfied--except at one of his Barmecide feasts.

Grandpa's oatmeal and milk finished, Johnnie urged the prunes upon him.
"Oo, lookee at the watermelon!" he cried. "The dandy, big
watermelon!--_on ice_!"

The mere word "watermelon" always stirred a memory in old Grandpa's
brain, as if he could almost recall when he, a young soldier of the
North, had taken his fill of sweet, black-seeded, carnation-tinted pulp
at some plantation in the harried South. And now he ate greedily till
the last prune was gone, when Johnnie had Buckle throw all of the green
rinds into the sink. (It was this attention to detail which invested his
games with reality.) Then, the repast finished, Grandpa fretted to be
away, whirling his chair and whimpering.

Johnnie had eaten through a perfect menu only as an unfillable boy can.
So he dismissed Buckle with a thousand-dollar bill, and the two
travelers were off, Johnnie making a great deal of jolly noise as he
fulfilled the duties of engineer, engine and conductor, Grandpa having
nothing to do but be an appreciative passenger.

To the old man the dish cupboard, which was Carthage, in "York State,"
never lost its interest, he having lived in that town long years ago,
before he marched out of it with a company of men who were bound for the
War. But the morris chair with its greasy cushions, which was the
capital, Albany, and the cookstove, which was very properly Pittsburgh
(though the surface of the earth had to be wrenched about in order to
put Pittsburgh after Albany on the way to "the Falls"), both of these
estimable cities also won their share of attention, th