and admiration for
that charming young teacher, who won all hearts in the village, The
Boy's among the number. Anyway, Bob was driven from the field by the
hard little green apples of the Knox orchard; more hurt, he declares, by
the desertion of his ally than by all the blows he received.

[Illustration: MUSIC LESSONS]

It never happened again, dear Bob, and, please God, it never will!

Another trouble The Boy had in Red Hook was Dr. McNamee, a resident
dentist, who operated upon The Boy, now and then. He was a little more
gentle than was The Boy's city dentist, Dr. Castle; but he hurt, for all
that. Dr. Castle lived in Fourth Street, opposite Washington Parade
Ground, and on the same block with Clarke and Fanning's school. And to
this day The Boy would go miles out of his way rather than pass Dr.
Castle's house. Personally Dr. Castle was a delightful man, who told The
Boy amusing stories, which The Boy could not laugh at while his mouth
was wide open. But professionally Dr. Castle was to The Boy an awful
horror, of whom he always dreamed when his dreams were particularly bad.
As he looks back upon his boyhood, with its frequent toothache and its
long hours in the dentists' chairs, The Boy sometimes thinks that if he
had his life to live over again, and could not go through it without
teeth, he would prefer not to be born at all!

It has rather amused The Boy, in his middle age, to learn of the
impressions he made upon Red Hook in his extreme youth. Bob, as has been
shown, associates him with a little cart, and with a good deal of the
concord of sweet sounds. One old friend remembers nothing but his
phenomenal capacity for the consumption of chicken pot-pie. Another old
friend can recall the scrupulously clean white duck suits which he wore
of afternoons, and also the blue-checked long apron which he was forced
to wear in the mornings; both of them exceedingly distasteful to The
Boy, because the apron was a girl's garment, and because the duck suit
meant "dress-up," and only the mildest of genteel play; while Bob's
sister dwells chiefly now upon the wonderful valentine The Boy sent once
to Zillah Crane. It was so large that it had to have an especial
envelope made to fit it; and it was so magnificent, and so delicate,
that, notwithstanding the envelope, it came in a box of its own. It had
actual lace, and pinkish Cupids reclining on light-blue clouds; and in
the centre of all was a compressible bird-cage, which, w