time ain't perzactly the truth. You ever
tell Miss Minerva stories, Billy?"

"Aunt Cindy always say, 't wa'n't no harm 't all to beat 'bout the bush
an' try to th'ow folks offer the track 'long as you can, but if it come
to the point where you got to tell a out-an'-out fib, she say for me
always to tell the truth, an' I jest nachelly do like she say ever sence
I's born," replied Billy.

The children swung awhile in silence. Presently Jimmy broke the quiet by
remarking,

"Don't you all feel sorry for old Miss Pollie Bumpus? She live all by
herself, and she 'bout a million years old, and Doctor Sanford ain't
never brung her no chillens 'cause she ain't got 'er no husban' to be
their papa, and she got a octopus in her head, and she poor as a post
and deaf as job's old turkey-hen."

"Job's old turkey-hen wasn't deaf," retorted Lina primly; "she was very,
very poor and thin."

"She was deaf, too," insisted Jimmy, "'cause it's in the Bible. I know
all 'bout job," bragged he.

"I know all 'bout job, too," chirped Frances.

"Job, nothing!" said Jimmy, with a sneer; "you all time talking 'bout
you know all 'bout job; you 'bout the womanishest little girl they is.
Now I know job 'cause Miss Cecilia 'splained all 'bout him to me. He's
in the Bible and he sold his birthmark for a mess of potatoes and--"

"You never can get anything right, Jimmy," interrupted Lina; "that was
Esau and it was not his birthmark, it was his birthstone; and he sold
his birthstone for a mess of potash."

"Yas," agreed Frances; "he saw Esau kissing Kate and Esau had to sell
him his birthstone to keep his mouth shut."

"Mother read me all about job," continued Lina; "he was afflicted with
boils and his wife knit him a job's comforter to wrap around him, and
he--"

"And he sat under a 'tato vine;" put in Frances eagerly, "what God grew
to keep the sun off o' his boils and--"

"That was Jonah," said Lina, "and it wasn't a potato vine; it was--"

"No, 't wasn't Jonah neither; Jonah is inside of a whale's bel--"

"Frances!"

"Stommick," Frances corrected herself, "and a whale swallow him, and
how's he going to sit under a pumpkin vine when he's inside of a whale?"

"It was not a pumpkin vine, it--"

"And I 'd jus' like to see a man inside of a whale a-setting under a
morning-glory vine."

"The whale vomicked him up," said Jimmy.

"What sorter thing is a octopus like what y' all say is in Miss Pollie
Bumpus's head?" asked Billy.

"'Ta