an't."

"Acton will send you a copy with the usual forty-per-cent. discount and
ten off for cash," the painter said.

They had their little laugh at my expense, and then Newton took up his
tale again. "Well, as I was saying--By the way, what _was_ I saying?"

The story-loving Rulledge remembered. "You went out with your wife and
children for Easter eggs."

"Oh yes. Thank you. Well, of course, in a town geographically American,
the shops were all shut on Sunday, and we couldn't buy even an Easter
egg on Easter Sunday. But one of the stores had the shade of its
show-window up, and the children simply glued themselves to it in such a
fascination that we could hardly unstick them. That window was full of
all kinds of Easter things--I don't remember what all; but there were
Easter eggs in every imaginable color and pattern, and besides these
there were whole troops of toy rabbits. I had forgotten that the natural
offspring of Easter eggs is rabbits; but I took a brace, and remembered
the fact and announced it to the children. They immediately demanded an
explanation, with all sorts of scientific particulars, which I gave
them, as reckless of the truth as I thought my wife would suffer without
contradicting me. I had to say that while Easter eggs mostly hatched
rabbits, there were instances in which they hatched other things, as,
for instance, handfuls of eagles and half-eagles and double-eagles,
especially in the case of the golden eggs that the goose laid. They knew
all about that goose; but I had to tell them what those unfamiliar
pieces of American coinage were, and promise to give them one each when
they grew up, if they were good. That only partially satisfied them, and
they wanted to know specifically what other kinds of things Easter eggs
would hatch if properly treated. Each one had a preference; the baby
always preferred what the last one said; and _she_ wanted an ostrich,
the same as her big brother; he was seven then.

"I don't really know how we lived through the day; I mean the children,
for my wife and I went to the Moravian church, and had a good long
Sunday nap in the afternoon, while the children were pining for Monday
morning, when they could buy eggs and begin to color them, so that they
could hatch just the right kind of Easter things. When I woke up I had
to fall in with a theory they had agreed to between them that any kind
of two-legged or four-legged chick that hatched from an Easter egg would
we