lids in a way that would have been horrible on a
less beautiful or less successfully saucy girl, but which in this case
was irresistibly amusing. The fair young man was convulsed.

"His figure is like as if he had swallowed our great washing-copper
whole and then padded round it with hay bags, and he has a great
vulgar stand with one foot here and the other over there by the
wheelbarrow."

"He must be a acrobat or be made of wonderful elastic, if he could
stretch that far!" remarked Andrew.

"Yes, and he gets up a gold-rimmed eyeglass and sticks it on his old
eye like this, and so I up with my finger and thumb this way in a ring
and looked at him," said Dawn, with a moue and the protrusion of a
healthy pink tongue which for dare-devil impertinence beat anything I
had seen off the stage, and I succumbed to laughter in chorus with the
young man.

By some intangible indications Andrew and I felt impelled to leave, he
proceeding to harness the horse and I accompanying him.

"Just look here, 'Giddy-giddy Gout with his shirt-tail out,'"
exclaimed the lad, breaking into one of the poetic quotations of which
he was rarely guilty. "Now, I didn't know me pants was tore. I must
have looked a goat!"

I offered to put a stitch in the breach, so he brought needle and
thread.

"Now don't you sew me on to me pants. Dawn done that once, thought it
was a great lark, an' I jolly well couldn't get out; so I busted up
the whole show, and grandma joined in the huspy-puspy, and there's
been no more larks like that. Thanks, I must do a get and put the pony
in. Did you notice that bloke fillin' up the cart with pumpkins? He's
gone on Dawn!"

"He shows good taste."

"Do you reckon Dawn's fit to knock 'em in the eye?"

"Rather!"

"That's bein' a stranger! When you are used to a person every day an'
they belong to you, you don't think so much of 'em, and at the same
time think more, if you can understand. What I mean is this. When I'm
busy fightin' with Dawn, and she's blowing me up for not doing things
and tellin' grandma on me, I can't see what the blokes can see in her;
but then if I caught any one saying she wasn't good for anything, if
he was a bloke I felt fit to wallop, I'd give him a nice sollicker
under the ear, an' I wouldn't bother about any other girl. Do you
see?"

"Yes; I'll hold up the shafts for you."

"Thanks. Well, that's 'Dora' Eweword that's doin' a kill with Dawn
now."

"Dora is a funny name for a man."