en I brought the safe over here, and we kept it on
the door-mat in front of your playhouse, to guard the premises."

"I should say I do remembah!" answered Lloyd. "Probably it's up in the
attic now. But what has that to do with the rhyme?"

"Don't you see? That must be the 'bank' where the wild thyme grows. I
don't know whether Betty refers to the wild time we used to have playing
in the attic, or the wild time that the watch kept. But I'm certain that
that is the bank she means."

"Come on, then," cried Lloyd. "Let's go up to the attic and hunt for it.
I haven't been up there for ovah a yeah."

Rob led the way to the upper hall, and then up the attic stairs, taking
the steep steps two at a time in long leaps.

"That isn't the way you used to climb these stairs," laughed Lloyd.
"Don't you know you had to weah little long-sleeved aprons when you came
ovah to play with me, to keep yoahself clean? You always stepped on the
front of them and stumbled going up these steps."

A headless and tailless hobby-horse of Rob's, on which they had ridden
many imaginary miles, stood in one corner, and he crossed over to
examine it, with an amused smile.

"It certainly didn't take much to amuse us in those days," he said,
touching the rockers with his foot, and starting the disabled beast to
bobbing back and forth. "How long has it been since we used to ride this
thing? Is my hair white? I declare I never had anything make me feel so
ancient as the sight of this old hobby-horse. I feel older than
grandfather."

Lloyd had opened a dilapidated hair-covered trunk, and was bending over
a family of dolls stowed away inside. "Heah is old Belinda!" she
exclaimed. "And Carrie Belle May, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flowah! 'And,
oh, Rob! Look at poah Nelly Bly, all wah-paint and feathahs, just as you
fixed her up for a squaw that day we had an Indian massacre in the grape
arbour. I had forgotten that we left her in such a fix!"

"I'll never forget that day," answered Rob. "Don't you remember how sore
I made my arm, trying to tattoo an anchor on it with a darning-needle
and clothes bluing? What else have you buried in that old trunk?"

Despite his six feet and seventeen years, Rob dropped down on a roll of
carpet beside the trunk, and watched with interest as Lloyd lifted out
one article after another over which they had quarrelled, or in whose
pleasure they had shared in what now seemed a dim and far-away playtime.
Don't you remember thi