the West," he returned in his amiable, childish
manner.

After my unfortunate introduction, however, the addition of a greater
and a lesser appeared to impress her but little. She looked scornfully
about the disorderly room, took off her big, florid bonnet, and began
arranging her hair before the three-cornered mottled mirror on the wall.
Then wheeling round in a temper, her eyes fell on Samuel, sitting
dejectedly on his tail by my mother's old blue and white gingham apron.

"What is that?" she fired straight into my father's face.

"That," he responded, offering his unnecessary information as if it were
a piece of flattery, "air the dawg, Sukey."

"Whose dawg?"

Goaded into defiance by this attack on my only friend, I spoke in a
shrill voice from the corner into which I had retreated. "Mine," I said.

"Wall, I'll tell you what!" exclaimed the female, charging suddenly upon
me, "if I've got to put up with a chance o' kids, I don't reckon I've
got to be plagued with critters, too. Shoo, suh! get out!"

Seizing my mother's broom, she advanced resolutely to the attack, and an
instant later, to my loud distress and to Samuel's unspeakable horror,
she had whisked him across the kitchen and through the back door out
into the yard.

"Steady, Sukey, steady," remarked my father caressingly, much as he
might have spoken to a favourite but unruly heifer. For an instant he
looked a little crestfallen, I saw with pleasure, but as soon as Samuel
was outside and the door had closed, he resumed immediately his usual
expression of foolish good humour. It was impossible, I think, for him
to retain an idea in his mind after the object of it had been removed
from his sight. While I was still drying my eyes on my frayed coat
sleeve, I watched him with resentment begin a series of playful lunges
at the neck of the female, which she received with a sulky and
forbidding air. Stealing away the next minute, I softly opened the back
door and joined the outcast Samuel, where he sat whining upon the step.

The night was very dark, but beyond the looming chimneys a lonely star
winked at me through the thick covering of clouds. I was a sturdy boy
for my age, sound in body, and inwardly not given to sentiment or
softness of any kind; but as I sat there on the doorstep, I felt a lump
rise in my throat at the thought that Samuel and I were two small
outcast animals in the midst of a shivering world. I remembered that
when my mother was alive I