red advertisements that he held into the
farthest corner of the room, threw himself on the floor at full length
and beat it with his hands, while he burst into a passion of tears.
"There! there!" he cried between his sobs, "I told 'em you'd tell it! I
told 'em you'd tell it! I told 'em you'd--but oh, I thought maybe you
wouldn't!" His wails brought Mrs. Kennett from a back piazza where she
was washing.

"Are you the teacher o' the _Kids Guards_, 'm?"

"Yes." It did not strike me at the time, in my anxiety, what a
sympathetic rendering of the German word this was; but we afterwards
found that "Kindergarten" was thus translated in Anna Street.

"Patsy couldn't go to-day, 'm, on account of him hevin' no good boots,
'm, Jim not bein' paid off till Wednesday, 'n me hevin' no notice he hed
no clean shirt, 'm, this not bein' his clean-shirt week, 'm. He takes it
awful hard about that there story, 'm. I told him as how you'd be after
tellin' another one next week, but it seems nothin' will comfort him."

"Ev'rybuddy's allers lyin' to me," he moaned; "there warn't another dog
picture like that in the hull room!"

"Don't take no notice of him, 'm, an' he'll git over it; he's subjick to
these spells of takin' on like. Set up, Pat, an' act decent! Tell the
lady you'll come when you git your boots."

"Patsy, boy, stop crying a minute and listen to me," I said. "If Mrs.
Kennett is willing, I have some things that will fit you; you shall come
right back with me now,--all the children have gone,--and you and I will
be alone with the sunshine and the birds and the fishes, as we were the
other day, and I will tell you the dog story just as I told it to the
other children this morning."

He got up slowly, rubbed his tattered sleeve across his wet cheek, and
looked at me searchingly to see if I might be trusted; then he limped to
the sink, treated his face and hands to a hasty but energetic scrub,
seized his fragment of a hat, gave his brief trousers a hitch which had
the air of being the last exquisite touch to a faultless toilet, and sat
down on the landing to mend his twine shoe-lace.

"Who is your neighbor in Number 32, Mrs. Kennett?" I asked as I rose to
go. "I went there to find you."

"Did you indeed, 'm? Well, I hope she treated you civil, 'm, though it
don't be much in her line. She's a Mis' Mooney, 'm. I know _her_, but
she don't know _me_ anny more sence she's riz in the wurrld. She moved
out of this house whin I moved