y without any
operation. She'd want another to put some go in her."

"She'd require inoculating with a little of yours," said I, watching
with what enviable vigour the girl's work sped before her as though
afraid. I also retired to my room for a rest, intending to come out
and pave the way for friendship with Dawn by-and-by, for I quickly
perceived she was not the character to go out of her way to make the
first overture.

Some time after, when strolling around in an unwonted fashion, I was
pleased to again encounter my friend Andrew. Evidently he had been set
to clean out the fowl-houses, for a wheelbarrow half full of manure
stood at the door of a wire-netted shed, and in the middle of this
task he had sought diversion by shooting rats from among the straw in
a big old barn, where a great heap of unused hay made them a harbour.
In this warm valley, carpeted in the irrepressible couch-grass, there
was no lack of fodder that season, and even the lanes and byways would
have served as fattening paddocks. Andrew leant upon his gun, and
having delivered himself of certain statistics in rat mortality, and
exhibiting some specimens by the tail, he began a conversation.

"Say, what did you think of Miss Thing-amebob, Miss Flipp I mean?"

"I didn't bother thinking anything at all about her."

Andrew looked interrogatively at me and broke into a grin.

"Well, I reckon she's the silliest goat I ever came across. She came
out to me and asked did I think she looked pretty, as her uncle is
coming up to-night, and if she looks nice he'll give her a present or
something. I reckon she'd have to look not such a mad-headed rabbit
before I'd give her anything but some advice to bag her head. And he
must be a different uncle to Uncle Jake; I reckon he wouldn't give you
nothing if you had on two heads at once. Here's Larry Witcom coming
back from his rounds, and he promised me a bit of meat for Whiskey!
Here, Whiskey! Whiskey!" he roared, and a small canine pet that had
been hunting rats desisted from the fray and ran with his master. I
also walked with him--this without exception, even in slum scenes on
the stage, being the dirtiest escort I ever had had. His face was
grimed, his shirt like an engine-rag, and his trousers dusty, while
from a hole in the seat thereof fluttered a flag of garment--such an
ingratiatingly wholesome blunderbuss of a boy!

"Here, you Larry," he yelled, "you promised me! Come on, Whiskey! Why,
ain't he a b