een put into skeletons (frocks never suited
him) that he became very friendly with Master Tony Johnson, a younger
brother of the young gentleman who sat in the puddle on purpose. Tony
was not enterprising, and Jackanapes led him by the nose. One summer's
evening they were out late, and Miss Jessamine was becoming anxious,
when Jackanapes presented himself with a ghastly face all besmirched
with tears. He was unusually subdued.

"I'm afraid," he sobbed; "if you please, I'm very much afraid that Tony
Johnson's dying in the churchyard."

Miss Jessamine was just beginning to be distracted, when she smelt
Jackanapes.

"You naughty, naughty boys! Do you mean to tell me that you've been
smoking?"

"Not pipes," urged Jackanapes; "upon my honor, Aunty, not pipes. Only
segars like Mr. Johnson's! and only made of brown paper with a very,
very little tobacco from the shop inside them."

Whereupon, Miss Jessamine sent a servant to the churchyard, who found
Tony Johnson lying on a tomb-stone, very sick, and having ceased to
entertain any hopes of his own recovery.

If it could be possible that any "unpleasantness" could arise between
two such amiable neighbors as Miss Jessamine and Mrs. Johnson--and if
the still more incredible paradox can be that ladies may differ over a
point on which they are agreed--that point was the admitted fact that
Tony Johnson was "delicate," and the difference lay chiefly in this:
Mrs. Johnson said that Tony was delicate--meaning that he was more
finely strung, more sensitive, a properer subject for pampering and
petting than Jackanapes, and that, consequently, Jackanapes was to blame
for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being chilled,
frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss Jessamine said that
Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was more puling, less
manly, and less healthily brought up than Jackanapes, who, when they got
into mischief together, was certainly not to blame because his friend
could not get wet, sit a kicking donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round,
bear the noise of a cracker, or smoke brown paper with impunity, as he
could.

Not that there was ever the slightest quarrel between the ladies. It
never even came near it, except the day after Tony had been so very sick
with riding Bucephalus in the giddy-go-round. Mrs. Johnson had explained
to Miss Jessamine that the reason Tony was so easily upset, was the
unusual sensitiveness (as a doctor had explaine