er seen in human form. A boy, seeming--how many
years old shall I say? for in some ways he might have been a century old
when he was born--looking, in fact, as if he had never been young, and
would never grow older. He had a shrunken, somewhat deformed body, a
curious, melancholy face, and such a head of dust-colored hair that he
might have been shocked for a door-mat. The sole redeemers of the
countenance were two big, pathetic, soft dark eyes, so appealing that
one could hardly meet their glance without feeling instinctively in
one's pocket for a biscuit or a ten-cent piece. But such a face! He had
apparently made an attempt at a toilet without the aid of a mirror, for
there was a clean circle like a race-track round his nose, which member
reared its crest, untouched and grimy, from the centre, like a sort of
judge's stand, while the dusky rim outside represented the space for
audience seats.

I gazed at this astonishing diagram of a countenance for a minute,
spellbound, thinking it resembled nothing so much as a geological map,
marked with coal deposits. And as for his clothes, his jacket was ragged
and arbitrarily docked at the waist, while one of his trousers-legs was
slit up at the side, and flapped hither and thither when he moved, like
a lug-sail in a calm.

"Well, sir," said I at length, waking up to my duties as hostess, "did
you come to see me?"

"Yes, I did."

"Let me think; I don't seem to remember; I am so sleepy. Are you one of
my little friends?"

"No, I hain't yit, but I'm goin' to be."

"That's good, and we'll begin right now, shall we?"

"I knowed yer fur Miss Kate the minute I seen yer."

"How was that, eh?"

"The boys said as how you was a kind o' pretty lady, with towzly hair in
front." (Shades of my cherished curls!)

"I'm very much obliged to the boys."

"Kin yer take me in?"

"What? Here? Into the Kindergarten?"

"Yes; I bin waitin' this yer long whiles fur to git in."

"Why, my dear little boy," gazing dubiously at his contradictory
countenance, "you're too--big, aren't you? We have only tiny little
people here, you know; not six years old. You are more, aren't you?"

"Well, I'm nine by the book; but I ain't more 'n scerce six along o' my
losing them three year."

"What do you mean, child? How could you _lose_ three years?" cried I,
more and more puzzled by my curious visitor.

"I lost 'em on the back stairs, don't yer know. My father he got
fightin' mad when he was drunk