ook at you, you are so disfigured! If _that_ is what
your father calls style----" and she shook her head disapprovingly.

He went to church and Sunday-school, and then his father took him up to
Tompkins Square for a walk. It seemed as if they had never been
acquainted before. Why, his father was real jolly. And it was a nice
week at school after the boys got done asking him "Who his Barber was?"
He could see the big B they put to it.

On Saturday afternoon Mrs. Reed had to go out shopping with a cousin.
She was an excellent shopper. She could find flaws, and beat down, and
get a spool of cotton or a piece of tape thrown in. When Charles came
home from singing-school he was to go over to the Deans and play in the
back yard. He was not to be out on the sidewalk at all.

They were going to have a splendid time. Elsie and Florence Hay would
bring their dolls. Even Josie envied the pretty names, though she
confessed to Hanny that she didn't think Hay was nice, because it made
you think of "hay, straw, oats" on the signs at the feed stores. But the
girls were very sweet and pleasant. Nora had come in with the cat
dressed in one of her own long baby frocks.

Hanny ran in to get her doll. It was still her choice possession, and
had been named and unnamed. Her mother began to think she was too big to
play with dolls, but Margaret had made it such a pretty wardrobe.

Ben sat at the front basement window reading. Mr. and Mrs. Underhill had
gone up to see Miss Lois, who was far from well. Margaret was out on
"professional rounds," which Ben thought quite a suggestive little
phrase. Martha was scrubbing and of course he couldn't talk to her. He
had cut the side of his foot with a splinter of glass, and his mother
would not allow him to put on his shoe.

Hanny brought down her doll. Ben looked rather wistfully at her.

"I wish you'd come in too. We're going to have such a nice time," she
said in a soft tone.

"I'd look fine playing with dolls."

"But you needn't really play with dolls. Mrs. Dean doesn't. She's the
grandmother. We go to visit her, and she tells us about the old times,
just as Aunt Nancy and Aunt Patience do. Of course she wasn't there
really, she makes believe, you know. And you might be the--the----"

"Grandfather who had lost his leg in the war."

Ben laughed. He had half a mind to go.

"Oh, that would be splendid. And you could be a prisoner when the
British held New York. There'd be such lots to talk