t he can't get out. I mean to eat him, too. Are jelly-fish good?" to
Eyebright.

"I don't believe they are," she replied. "I never heard of anybody's
eating them."

"I like fishes," went on Sinclair. "My mamma says she guesses I've got
a taste for nat-nat-ural history. When I grow up I mean to read all
the books about animals."

"And what do you like?" asked Eyebright of the other little boy, who
had not spoken yet, and whose fair baby face had an odd, almost
satirical expression.

"Fried hominy," was the unexpected reply, uttered in a sharp, distinct
voice. The children shouted and Eyebright laughed, but Freddy only
smiled faintly in a condescending way. And now Eyebright remembered
that she was on her road to the cave,--a fact quite forgotten for the
moment,--and she jumped up and said she must go.

"Perhaps Mrs. Waurigan will know where the Oven is," she added.

"I guess so," replied Lotty; "because she does know about a great
many, many things. Good-by!--do come again to-morrow, and bring
Dolly, won't you?" and she gave Genevieve one kiss and Eyebright
another. "You're pretty big to play with dolls, I think.
But then"--meditatively--"she's a pretty big doll too."

Mrs. Waurigan was knitting a blue-yarn stocking. She could tell
Eyebright nothing about the Oven.

"I know it's not a great way off," she said. "But I've never been
there. It can't be over a mile, if it's so much as that; that I'm sure
of. Have you walked up all the way from Scrapplehead? I want to know?
It's a long way for you to come."

"Not so far as New York city," said Eyebright, laughing. "Those little
girls tell me they come from there."

"Yes; the twins and Sinclair and Freddy all come from New York. Their
mother, Mis' Brown, who is a real nice lady, was up here last year.
She took a desprit fancy to the place, and when the children had
scarlet fever in the spring, and Lotty was so sick that the doctor
didn't think she'd ever get over it, she just packed their trunk and
sent them right off here just as soon as they was fit to travel. She
said all she asked was that I'd feed 'em and do for 'em just as I do
for my own; and you wouldn't believe how much they've improved since
they came. They look peaked enough still, but for all that nobody'd
think that they were the same children."

"And did the little boys come with them?"

"Yes. They're neighbors, Miss' Brown wrote, and their mother wanted to
go to the Springs, or somewhere, so she