ring each
of her most impressive moments, she flashed, from the far corner of her
eye, two questions at Jane: "How about THAT one? Are you still watching
Me?"

Then, apparently in the very midst of her cares, she suddenly and
without warning ceased to boss, walked out into the street, halted, and
stared frankly at Jane.

Jane had begun her automatic feeding again. She continued it, meanwhile
seriously returning the stare of the new neighbor. For several minutes
this mutual calm and inoffensive gaze was protracted; then Jane, after
swallowing the last morsel of her supplies, turned her head away and
looked at a tree. The little girl, into whose eyes some wistfulness had
crept, also turned her head and looked at a tree. After a while, she
advanced to the curb on Jane's side of the street, and, swinging her
right foot, allowed it to kick the curbstone repeatedly.

Jane came out to the sidewalk and began to kick one of the
fence-pickets.

"You see that ole fatty?" asked the little girl, pointing to one of the
workmen, thus sufficiently identified.

"Yes."

"That's the one broke the goldfish," said the little girl. There was a
pause during which she continued to scuff the curbstone with her shoe,
Jane likewise scuffing the fence-picket. "I'm goin' to have papa get him
arrested," added the stranger.

"My papa got two men arrested once," Jane said, calmly. "Two or three."

The little girl's eyes, wandering upward, took note of Jane's papa's
house, and of a fierce young gentleman framed in an open window
up-stairs. He was seated, wore ink upon his forehead, and tapped his
teeth with a red penholder.

"Who is that?" she asked.

"It's Willie."

"Is it your papa?"

"NO-O-O-O!" Jane exclaimed. "It's WILLIE!"

"Oh," said the little girl, apparently satisfied.

Each now scuffed less energetically with her shoe; feet slowed down;
so did conversation, and, for a time, Jane and the stranger wrapped
themselves in stillness, though there may have been some silent
communing between them. Then the new neighbor placed her feet far apart
and leaned backward upon nothing, curving her front outward and her
remarkably flexible spine inward until a profile view of her was grandly
semicircular.

Jane watched her attentively, but without comment. However, no one
could have doubted that the processes of acquaintance were progressing
favorably.

"Let's go in our yard," said Jane.

The little girl straightened herself with a s