powerful and
painful nudges, with which he emphasizes his conversation on his
listener's ribs.

"Look at him!" indicating his elder brother, and speaking with a tone of
disgust and disparagement; "did you ever see such a _beast_ as he
looks?"

"Not often!" reply I, readily, with that fine intolerance which one
never sees in full bloom after youth is past.

"I say, Nancy!" with a second and rather lesser nudge, "if ever you see
any symptoms of--of _that_--" (nodding toward the pulpit) "in me--"

"If--" repeat I, scornfully, "of course I shall!"

"Well, that is as it may be, but if you _do_, mind what I tell you--do
not say any thing to anybody, but--_put an end to me_! it does not
matter _how_; smother me with bolsters; run your bodkin up to its hilt
in me--"

"Even if I _did_," interrupt I, laughing, "I should never reach any
vital part--you are _much_ too fat!"

"I should not be so fat then," returns he, gravely, amiably overlooking
the personality of my observation; "love would have pulled me down!"

The Brat has nearly finished. He is nimbly descending the ladder, with a
long, guttering dip in his right hand.

"The other two--" begins Bobby, thoughtfully, turning his eyes from
pulpit to font.

"I do not mind _them_ half so much," interrupt I, indulgently; "they are
not half so disgusting."

"Has he done it yet?" (lowering his cheerful loud voice to an important
whisper).

I shake my head.

"Not unless he has done it since luncheon! he had not _then_; I asked
her."

"I am beginning to think that _your_ old man's plan was the best, after
all," continues Bobby, affably. "I thought him rather out of date, at
the time, for applying to your parents, but, after all, it saved a great
deal of trouble, and spared us a world of suspense."

I am silent; swelling with a dumb indignation at the epithet bestowed on
my Roger; but unable to express it outwardly, as I well know that, if I
do, I shall be triumphantly quoted against myself.

"Who will break it to Toothless Jack?" says Bobby, presently, with a
laugh; "after all the expense he has been at, too, with those teeth! it
is not as if it were a beggarly two or three, but a whole complete new
set--thirty-two individual grinders!"

"Such beauties, too!" puts in Tou Tou, cackling.

"It is a thousand pities that they should be allowed to go out of the
family," says Bobby, warmly. "Tou Tou, my child--" (putting his arm
round her shoulders)--"a bright vista op