Now here are my two neighbors, contagious to me on
both sides--one goes for probation, t'other for licentiousness; and I
think the best thing for me is to keep nuisance."

She meant neutral, of course. The neighbor admired, and smiled, while
Ike lay on the floor, with his legs in the air, trying to balance Mrs.
Partington's fancy waiter on his toe.

IX

Christmas Ike was made the happy possessor of a fiddle, which he found
in the morning near his stocking.

"Has he got a musical bent?" Banfield asked, of whom Mrs. Partington was
buying the instrument.

"Bent, indeed!" said she; "no, he's as straight as an error."

He explained by repeating the question regarding his musical
inclination.

"Yes," she replied; "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a
drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or
an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King
David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but
the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it without
much noise. Some prefers a violeen; but I don't know."

The fiddle was well improved, till the horsehair all pulled out of the
bow, and it was then twisted up into a fish-line.

XVI

"How limpid you walk!" said a voice behind us, as we were making a
hundred and fifty horse-power effort to reach a table whereon reposed a
volume of Bacon. "What is the cause of your lameness?" It was Mrs.
Partington's voice that spoke, and Mrs. Partington's eyes that met the
glance we returned over our left shoulder. "Gout," said we, briefly,
almost surlily. "Dear me," said she; "you are highly flavored! It was
only rich people and epicacs in living that had the gout in olden
times." "Ah!" we growled, partly in response, and partly with an
infernal twinge, "Poor soul!" she continued, with commiseration, like an
anodyne, in the tones of her voice; "the best remedy I know for it is an
embarkation of Roman wormwood and lobelia for the part infected, though
some say a cranberry poultice is best; but I believe the cranberries is
for erisipilis, and whether either of 'em is a rostrum for the gout or
not, I really don't know. If it was a fraction of the arm, I could jest
know what to subscribe." We looked into her eye with a determination to
say something severely bitter, because we felt allopathic just then; but
the kind and sympathizing look that met our own disarmed severity, and
sinking into a