a post, and the boy
whistled him a tune, or he would have tostid Mr. Marrowbone the Smith."

Said Aunt M'riar irrelevantly:--"What was the tune he whistled, Dave?
You tell Mrs. Prichard what tune it was he whistled!" To which Dave
answered with reserve:--"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was
limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, _da capo ad
libitum_. This legend--the thin plot of Dave's story--will not strike
some who have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of
the country boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, who
especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the term
_manhood_.

This conversation would scarcely have called for record but for what it
led to.

Old Mrs. Prichard, like Aunt M'riar, had a vice. It was jealousy. Her
eighty years' experience of a bitter world had left her--for all that
she would sit quiet for hours and say never a word--still longing for
the music of the tide that had gone out for her for ever. The love of
this little man--which had not yet learned its value, and was at the
service of age and youth alike--was to her even as a return of the
sea-waves to some unhappy mollusc left stranded to dry at leisure in the
sun. But her heart was in a certain sense athirst for the monopoly of
his blue eyes. She did not grudge him to any legitimate claimant--to
Uncle Mo or to Aunt M'riar, nor even to Mrs. Burr; though that good
woman scarcely challenged jealousy. Indeed, Mrs. Burr regarded Dave and
Dolly as mere cake-consumers--a public hungering for sweet-stuffs, and
only to be bought off by occasional concessions. It was otherwise with
unknown objects of Dave's affection, whose claims on him resembled Mrs.
Prichard's own. Especially the old grandmother at the Convalescent Home,
or whatever it was, where the child had recovered from his terrible
accident. She grudged old Mrs. Marrowbone her place in Dave's
affections, and naturally lost no opportunity of probing into and
analysing them.

Said the old lady to Dave, when the bull was disposed of: "Was Mr.
Marrowbone the Smith old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson?" Dave shook his
head rather solemnly and regretfully. It is always pleasanter to say
_yes_ than _no_; but in this case Truth was compulsory. "He wasn't
_anyfink_ of Granny Marrowbone's. No, he wasn't!" said he, and continued
shaking his head to rub the fact in.

"Now you're making of it up, Dave," said Aunt M'riar. "You be a good
l