with a singularly
pathetic combination of infant delicacy of outline and maturity of
expression. His heavily fringed eyes expressed an already weary and
discontented intelligence, and his willful, resolute little mouth was, I
fancied, marked with lines of pain at either corner. He struck me as not
only being physically dyspeptic, but as morally loathing his attendants
and surroundings.

My entrance did not disturb the waiter, with whom I had no financial
relations; he simply concealed an exaggerated yawn professionally behind
his napkin until my own servitor should appear. The nurse slightly awoke
from her abstraction, shoved the child mechanically,--as if starting
up some clogged machinery,--said, "Eat your breakfast, Johnnyboy," and
subsided into her dream. I think the child had at first some faint hope
of me, and when my waiter appeared with my breakfast he betrayed some
interest in my selection, with a view of possible later appropriation,
but, as my repast was simple, that hope died out of his infant mind.
Then there was a silence, broken at last by the languid voice of the
nurse:--

"Try some milk then--nice milk."

"No! No mik! Mik makes me sick--mik does!"

In spite of the hurried infantine accent the protest was so emphatic,
and, above all, fraught with such pent-up reproach and disgust, that I
turned about sympathetically. But Johnnyboy had already thrown down his
spoon, slipped from his high chair, and was marching out of the room as
fast as his little sandals would carry him, with indignation bristling
in every line of the crisp bows of his sash.

I, however, gathered from Mr. Johnson, my waiter, that the unfortunate
child owned a fashionable father and mother, one or two blocks of
houses in New York, and a villa at Greyport, which he consistently and
intelligently despised. That he had imperiously brought his parents
here on account of his health, and had demanded that he should breakfast
alone in the big dining-room. That, however, he was not happy. "Nuffin
peahs to agree wid him, Sah, but he doan' cry, and he speaks his mind,
Sah; he speaks his mind."

Unfortunately, I did not keep Johnnyboy's secret, but related the scene
I had witnessed to some of the lighter-hearted Crustaceans of either
sex, with the result that his alliterative protest became a sort of
catchword among them, and that for the next few mornings he had a large
audience of early breakfasters, who fondly hoped for a repetition of