uch on my sleeve, "an' you must come to the side gate
where grandmama won't see you. I'll let you in an' mamma will not mind.
But you mustn't come often," she concluded in a sterner tone, "only once
or twice, so that there won't be any danger of my growin' like you. It
would hurt grandmama dreadfully if I were ever to grow like you."

She paused a moment, and then began dancing up and down in her red shoes
over the coloured leaves. "I'd like to play--play--play all the time!"
she sang, whirling, a vivid little figure, around, the crumbling vault.

The next minute she caught up the puppy in her arms and hugged him
passionately before she turned away.

"His name is Samuel!" she called back over her shoulder as she ran out
of the churchyard.

When she had gone down the short flight of steps and into the wide
street, I tucked Samuel under my arm, and lugged him, not without inward
misgivings, into the kitchen, where my mother stood at the
ironing-board, with one foot on the rocker of Jessy's cradle.

"Ma," I began in a faltering and yet stubborn voice, "I've got a pup."

My mother's foot left the rocker, and she turned squarely on me, with a
smoking iron half poised above the garment she had just sprinkled on the
board.

"Whar did he come from?" she demanded, and moistened the iron with the
thumb of her free hand.

"I got him in the churchyard. His name is Samuel."

For a moment she stared at the two of us in a stony silence. Then her
face twitched as if with pain, the perplexed and anxious look appeared
in her eyes, and her mouth relaxed.

"Wall, he's ugly enough to be named Satan," she said, "but I reckon if
you want to you may put him in a box in the back yard. Give him that
cold sheep's liver in the safe and then you come straight in and comb
yo' head. It looks for all the world like a tousled straw stack."

All the afternoon I sat in our little sitting-room, and faithful to my
promise, shammed sickness, while Samuel lay in his box in the back yard
and howled.

"I'll have that dog taken up the first thing in the mornin'," declared
my mother furiously, as she cleared the supper table.

"I reckon he's lonely out thar, Susan," urged my father, observing my
trembling mouth, and eager, as usual, to put a pacific face on the
moment.

"Lonely, indeed! I'm lonely in here, but I don't set up a howlin'.
Thar're mighty few folks, be they dogs or humans, that get all the
company they want in life."

Once I crept