nothing childish
about that little imp, nothing. And what's more, I shall be obliged to
you, Isabel, if you will never again have the assurance to speak of my
Betsy Beauty in the same breath with a child of yours."

That was more than I could hear. My little heart was afire at the
humiliation put upon my mother. So stepping out to the head of the
stairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble:

"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but she'll
burn in hell!"

Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of that
pronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle of
the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her. Then, ghastly
white and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I could
recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek and
boxed both my ears.

I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in the
midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demanded
in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told what
was going on.

Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother did
not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, she
began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she could
not live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her.

"I have to leave this house--I have to leave it to-morrow," she said.

"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm just
crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These children
must go to school. They must all go--the darned lot of 'em."

SIXTH CHAPTER

Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I
first became known to the doctor's boy.

It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in
the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The
church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house,
under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while
I made my voice as soft as I could and said:

"Mamma, what is it'?"

"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.

I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the
window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty
air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing,
and then the chain of our front door rattl