intimacies, and he acquired the art of saying things more exciting than
"Don't haf to!" and "Doctor says it ain't healthy!" Thus, on a summer
afternoon, a strange boy, sitting bored upon the gate-post of the
Reverend Malloch Smith, beheld George Amberson Minafer rapidly
approaching on his white pony, and was impelled by bitterness to shout:
"Shoot the ole jackass! Look at the girly curls! Say, bub, where'd you
steal your mother's ole sash!"

"Your sister stole it for me!" Georgie instantly replied, checking the
pony. "She stole it off our clo'es-line an' gave it to me."

"You go get your hair cut!" said the stranger hotly. "Yah! I haven't got
any sister!"

"I know you haven't at home," Georgie responded. "I mean the one that's
in jail."

"I dare you to get down off that pony!"

Georgie jumped to the ground, and the other boy descended from the
Reverend Mr. Smith's gatepost--but he descended inside the gate. "I dare
you outside that gate," said Georgie.

"Yah! I dare you half way here. I dare you--"

But these were luckless challenges, for Georgie immediately vaulted
the fence--and four minutes later Mrs. Malloch Smith, hearing strange
noises, looked forth from a window; then screamed, and dashed for the
pastor's study. Mr. Malloch Smith, that grim-bearded Methodist, came to
the front yard and found his visiting nephew being rapidly prepared by
Master Minafer to serve as a principal figure in a pageant of massacre.
It was with great physical difficulty that Mr. Smith managed to give
his nephew a chance to escape into the house, for Georgie was hard and
quick, and, in such matters, remarkably intense; but the minister, after
a grotesque tussle, got him separated from his opponent, and shook him.

"You stop that, you!" Georgie cried fiercely; and wrenched himself away.
"I guess you don't know who I am!"

"Yes, I do know!" the angered Mr. Smith retorted. "I know who you are,
and you're a disgrace to your mother! Your mother ought to be ashamed of
herself to allow--"

"Shut up about my mother bein' ashamed of herself!"

Mr. Smith, exasperated, was unable to close the dialogue with dignity.
"She ought to be ashamed," he repeated. "A woman that lets a bad boy
like you--"

But Georgie had reached his pony and mounted. Before setting off at his
accustomed gallop, he paused to interrupt the Reverend Malloch Smith
again. "You pull down your vest, you ole Billygoat, you!" he shouted,
distinctly. "Pull down your ves