ds which to turn;
and, reaching it, paused to look in through the half-open
door,--delighted thus to watch and listen for a little space unseen.

Sallie was sitting, her handsome head bent over her sewing,--Frankie
gambolling about the floor.

"O sis, _don't_ you wish Jim would come home?" queried the youngster. "I
do,--I wish he'd come right straight away."

"Right straight away? What do _you_ want to see Jim for?"

"O, 'cause he's nice; and 'cause he'll take me to the Theayter; and
'cause he'll treat,--apples, and peanuts, and candy, you know,
and--and--ice-cream," wiping the beads from his little red face,--the
last desideratum evidently suggested by the fiery summer heat. "I say,
Sallie!"--a pause--"won't you get me some ice-cream this evening?"

"Yes, Bobbity, if you'll be a good boy."

Frankie looked dubious over that proposition. Jim never made any such
stipulations: so, after another pause, in which he was probably
considering the whole subject with due and becoming gravity,--evidently
desiring to hear his own wish propped up by somebody else's
seconding,--he broke out again, "Now, Sallie, don't you just wish Jim
would come home?"

"O Frankie, don't I?" cried the girl, dropping her work, and stretching
out her empty arms as though she would clasp some shape in the air.

Frankie, poor child! innocently imagining the proffered embrace was for
him, ran forward, for he was an affectionate little soul, to give Sallie
a good hug, but found himself literally left out in the cold; no arms to
meet, and no Sallie, indeed, to touch him. Something big, burly, and
blue loomed up on his sight,--something that was doing its best to crush
Sallie bodily, and to devour what was not crushed; something that could
say nothing by reason of its lips being so much more pleasantly engaged,
and whose face was invisible through its extraordinary proximity to
somebody else's face and hair.

Frankie, finding he could gain neither sight nor sound of notice, began
to howl. But as neither of the hard-hearted creatures seemed to care for
the poor little chap's howling, he fell upon the coat-tails of the big
blue obstruction, and pulled at them lustily,--not to say
viciously,--till their owner turned, and beheld him panting and fiery.

"Helloa, youngster! what's to pay now?"

"Wow! if 'tain't Jim. Hooray!" screeched the youngster, first embracing
the blue legs, and then proceeding to execute a dance upon his head.
"Te, te, di di, id