softened as she listened. Was it something of that same force which
bounded boisterously up in boy and dogs which was stealing over
Ann--softening, healing, claiming?

The next paragraph of the story on the printed page was less interesting.

"Aunt Kate," said Worth, gathering both puppies into his arms as they
were succeeding all too well in demonstrating that they were going to
grow up and be real dogs, "Watts says it is the ungodliest thing he knows
of that these puppies haven't got any names."

"I am glad to learn," murmured Kate, "that Watts is a true son of the
church. He yearns for a christening?"

"He says that being as nobody else has thought up names for them, he
calls the one that is most yellow, Mike; and the one that is most white,
Pat. Do you think Mike and Pat are pretty names, Aunt Kate?"

"Well, I can't say that my esthetic sense fairly swoons with delight at
sound of Mike and Pat," she laughed.

"I'll tell you, Worthie," she suggested, looking up with twinkling eye
after her young nephew had been experimenting with various intonations of
Mike--Pat, Pat--Mike, "why don't you call one of them _Pourquoi_?"

He walked right into it with the never-failing "Why?"

"Just so. Call one _Pourquoi_ and the other _N'est-ce-pas_. They do good
team work in both the spirit and the letter. _Pourquoi_, Worth, is your
favorite word in French. Need I add that it means 'why'? And
_N'est-ce-pas_--well, Watts would say _N'est-ce-pas_ meant 'ain't it'?
and more flexible translators find it to mean anything they are seeking
to persuade you is true. Pourquoi is the inquirer and N'est-ce-pas the
universalist. I trust Watts will give this his endorsement."

"I'll ask him," gravely replied Worth, and sought to accustom the puppies
to their new names with chanting--Poor Qua--Nessa Pa. The chant grew so
melancholy that the puppies subsided; oppressed, overpowered, perhaps,
with the sense of being anything as large and terrible as inquirer and
universalist.

But Worth was too true a son of the army to leave a brooding damsel long
alone in the corner. "You seen the new cow?" was his friendly approach.

"Why, I don't believe I have," she confessed.

"I s'pose you've seen the chickens?" he asked, a trifle condescendingly.

Ann shamefacedly confessed that she had not as yet seen the chickens.

He took a step backward for the weighty, crushing: "Well, you've seen the
_horses_, haven't you?"

"Aunt Kate--Aunt Kate!" he cal