, in a desperate tone; for things looked very black to her
just then.

"My dear, don't say that," began her mother, mildly shocked; but a
bluff little voice broke in with the forcible remark,--

"She's everlastingly telling me never to put off till to-morrow what
can be done to-day; next time she comes I'll remind her of that, and
ask her, if she is going to die, why she doesn't do it?"

"Toady! you're a wicked, disrespectful boy; never let me hear you say
such a thing again about your dear Aunt Kipp."

"She isn't dear! You know we all hate her, and you are more afraid of
her than you are of spiders,--so now."

The young personage whose proper name had been corrupted into Toady,
was a small boy of ten or eleven, apple-cheeked, round-eyed, and
curly-headed; arrayed in well-worn, gray knickerbockers, profusely
adorned with paint, glue, and shreds of cotton. Perched on a high
stool, at an isolated table in a state of chaos, he was absorbed in
making a boat, entirely oblivious of the racking tooth-ache which had
been his excuse for staying from school. As cool, saucy, hard-handed,
and soft-hearted a little specimen of young America was Toady as you
would care to see; a tyrant at home, a rebel at school, a sworn foe
to law, order, and Aunt Kipp. This young person was regarded as a
reprobate by all but his mother, sister, and sister's sweetheart, Van
Bahr Lamb. Having been, through much anguish of flesh and spirit,
taught that lying was a deadly sin, Toady rushed to the other extreme,
and bolted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
at all times and places, with a startling abruptness that brought
wrath and dismay upon his friends and relatives.

"It's wicked to fib; you've whipped that into me and you can't rub it
out," he was wont to say, with vivid recollection of the past tingling
in the chubby portions of his frame.

"Mind your chips, Toady, and take care what you say to Aunt Kipp, or
you'll be as poor as a little rat all the days of your life," said
Polly, warningly.

"I don't want her old money, and I'll tell her so if she bothers me
about it. I shall go into business with Van and take care of the whole
lot; so don't you preach, Polly," returned Toady, with as much dignity
as was compatible with a great dab of glue on the end of his snub
nose.

"Mother, did aunt say anything about coming this week?" asked Polly,
after a pause of intense thought over a breadth with three darns, two
spots,