"

"Aint, either! You can see great things with the back of your head!
Here's your piece 'n' here's mine. Yours is ever so much bigger!"

"Well, you've been gobbling yours's fast's you could, and I only had
two little bites off mine."

"_Little_ bites! I sh'd think so! Don't know what you call big ones,
then! So chuck full you couldn't speak half a minute ago. Here, hold
your own cake, and let baby grab it!"

"Well, I'd rather give it _all_ to him, than have you eat it up on the
sly!"

Bub walked down toward the water without deigning a reply, but thought
of several things on his way which would have been more withering than
silence.

Mandy did not enjoy the rest of her cake very much,--eating it
furtively, so baby should not want it, and dropping crumbs on his
little white head, which he kept twisting around, to see what she was
doing. She began to think that perhaps she had been rather hasty in
accusing Bub; but surely that was the right-hand piece, instead of the
left, he was biting from? Well, anyway, it didn't much matter now the
cake was all eaten. The old rooster had wandered round the corner of
the house, where he was presently heard calling to his favorite hen.
She ran, and all the others followed. Baby grew restless, and made
little impatient noises, and the sun was getting very hot and bright on
the door-step. What _was_ Bub doing down there among the nets on the
drying-ground? He had been very still, with his head bent down and his
hands moving about for ever so long.

Mandy felt that, after their late unpleasantness, it would be more
dignified to take no notice of Bub for a while; but curiosity, and
baby's restlessness, finally prevailed over pride, and rolling up her
troublesome little burden in an old red shawl, she trotted with him
down to the river.

"Bub," she said, after standing by him some time in silence, watching
him driving a row of small sticks into the ground, "_was_ it my piece
you was bitin' off?"

"I told you 't wasn't. If you don't b'l'eve me, what's the use o' my
sayin' so again?"

"Well, I'm sorry, Bub. I just caught a sight of you as I turned my
head, an' I thought--"

"Oh, well, never mind what you thought; we've heard enough 'bout that
cake! Shove your foot one side a little? I want to drive another spile
there. Them's the hitchin' spiles on the inside."

"What you buildin'?" asked Mandy.

"Can't you see for yourself? What's built on spiles, I'd like to know!
Meeting