ned 'em outen their slippers!
Oh, jiminy! Never, never, NEVER before was they so skeert! Never since
school kept did they have to crawl like that! They was skeert enough
FIRST when you come, but just now!--Lordy! They wasn't a-goin' to let
you see me--but they had to! had to! HAD TO!" and she emphasized each
repetition with a skip.

"I believe--er," said the colonel blandly, "that I--er--intimated with
some firmness"--

"That's it--just it!" interrupted the child delightedly.
"You--you--overdid 'em"

"What?"

"OVERDID 'EM! Don't you know? They're always so high and mighty! Kinder
'Don't tech me. My mother's an angel; my father's a king'--all that sort
of thing. They did THIS"--she drew herself up in a presumable imitation
of the two women's majestic entrance--"and then," she continued,
"you--YOU jest did this"--here she lifted her chin, and puffing out her
small chest, strode towards the colonel in evident simulation of his
grandest manner.

A short, deep chuckle escaped him--although the next moment his face
became serious again. But Pansy in the mean time had taken possession of
his coat sleeve and was rubbing her cheek against it like a young colt.
At which the colonel succumbed feebly and sat down on the sofa, the
child standing beside him, leaning over and transferring her little
hands to the lapels of his frock coat, which she essayed to button over
his chest as she looked into his murky eyes.

"The other girls said," she began, tugging at the button, "that you was
a 'cirkiss'"--another tug--"'a nigger minstrel'"--and a third tug--"'a
agent with samples'--but that showed all they knew!"

"Ah," said the colonel with exaggerated blandness, "and--er--what did
YOU--er--say?"

The child smiled. "I said you was a Stuffed Donkey--but that was BEFORE
I knew you. I was a little skeert too; but NOW"--she succeeded in
buttoning the coat and making the colonel quite apoplectic,--"NOW I
ain't frightened one bit--no, not one TINY bit! But," she added, after a
pause, unbuttoning the coat again and smoothing down the lapels between
her fingers, "you're to keep on frightening the old cats--mind! Never
mind about the GIRLS. I'll tell them."

The colonel would have given worlds to be able to struggle up into an
upright position with suitable oral expression. Not that his vanity was
at all wounded by these irresponsible epithets, which only excited an
amused wonder, but he was conscious of an embarrassed pleasure in the