It
required some effort to steady his nerves after this, and when footfalls
were again audible outside, and all the denizens of the place sat calmly
smoking their pipes without so much as a movement toward investigating
the sound, he, knowing whose steps he had invited thither, had great
ado with the coward within to keep still, as if he had no more reason to
fear an approach than they.

A great jargon in the tone of ecstasy broke suddenly on the air upon
this new entrance, shattering what little composure Nehemiah had been
able to muster; a wide-mouthed exaggeration of welcome in superlative
phrases and ready chorus. Swiftly turning, he saw nothing for a moment,
for he looked at the height which a man's head might reach, and the
new-comer measured hardly two feet in stature, waddled with a very
uncertain gait, and although he bore himself with manifest complacence,
he had evidently heard the like before, as he was jovially hailed by
every ingratiating epithet presumed to be acceptable to his infant
mind. He was attended by a tall, gaunt boy of fifteen, barefooted, with
snaggled teeth and a shock of tow hair, wearing a shirt of unbleached
cotton, and a pair of trousers supported by a single suspender drawn
across a sharp, protuberant shoulder-blade behind and a very narrow
chest in front.

But his face was proud and happy and gleeful, as if he occupied some
post of honor and worldly emolument in attending upon the waddling
wonder on the floor in front of him, instead of being assigned the
ungrateful task of seeing to it that a very ugly baby closely related
to him did not, with the wiliness and ingenuity of infant nature, invent
some method of making away with himself. For he _was_ an ugly baby as
he stood revealed in the flare of the furnace door, thrown open that his
admirers and friends might feast their eyes upon him. His short wisps
of red hair stood straight up in front; his cheeks were puffy and round,
but very rosy; his eyes were small and dark, but blandly roguish; his
mouth was wide and damp, and had in it a small selection of sample
teeth, as it were; he wore a blue checked homespun dress garnished down
the back with big horn buttons, sparsely set on; he clasped his chubby
hands upon a somewhat pompous stomach; he sidled first to the right,
then to the left, in doubt as to which of the various invitations he
should accept.

"Kem hyar, Snooks!" "Right hyar, Toodles!" "Me hyar, Monkey Doodle!"
"Hurrah fur t