ere! I can't have such talk. You're making that up out
of your own head. You never lived near a giant, and I don't believe
you ever had a sling."

"Oh, yes, I had a sling, Uncle Joel, and once I shooted a bear with
it--and a Indian."

"I guess you haven't been very well brought up," rebuked Joel, who like
most people of his type was quite unable to distinguish between the
gambols of the creative imagination and deliberate falsifying. "Don't
you know where little girls go when they tell lies?"

"I knew a little girl once who telled lies," admitted Celia, her
shocked accents indicating her full appreciation of the reprehensible
character of the practise. "And she went to the circus. Her uncle
took her."

From under the bed clothing came a peculiar rasping sound like the
grating of a rusty key in a lock long unused. It was no wonder that
Celia jumped, though she was considerably less startled than Joel
himself. He had laughed, and more appalling still, had laughed at
unmistakable evidences of natural depravity which by good rights should
have awakened in him emotions of abhorrence.

"It would be pretty serious for me to backslide now, considering the
state of my health," reflected Joel. He attempted to counteract the
effects of that indiscreet laugh by a blood-curdling groan, and this
demonstration caused Celia to repeat her calming ministrations,
smoothing his rough cheek with velvety hands, and inadvertently poking
one plump forefinger into his eye. Joel blinked. He could easily have
ordered her from the room, but he did not exercise this prerogative.
He was vaguely conscious of an unwarranted satisfaction in the nearness
of this pixy. Her preference for his society flattered his vanity. He
observed her guardedly from the corner of his eye. Undoubtedly she was
a very naughty little girl who told wrong stories and was painfully
lacking in reverence. But at the same time--Joel chuckled again, his
vocal chords responding uncertainly to the unfamiliar prompting--at the
same time she was cute.

At the supper table the evening before for all his gloomy abstraction,
Joel had noticed Betty's engaging prettiness and had thought _apropos_
of Celia, "Persis never picked that young one out for her looks." Now
through half closed eyes he studied the small piquant face and found
his opinion altered. Celia was not pretty. Her straight black hair,
just long enough to be continually in her eyes, was pushed back f