e swore under his breath, and she agreed, hurriedly:

"Father was simply mad to notice him! People will guess--"

But Carl broke in: "Oh, I didn't mean _that_. No one would ever suspect
anything. I meant, what right has _he_ to get fond of--the boy?"

"Not the slightest!" Mary said. And they neither of them knew that they
were beginning to be jealous.

The occasion of Mr. Smith's "madness" was one winter afternoon when,
meeting Johnny in the road, he took him into his carriage, then sent
word to Miss Lydia that he was keeping the child to supper. He put him
in a big chair at the other end of the table and baited him with
questions, and roared with laughter and pride at his replies. Also, he
gave him good advice, as a grandfather should:

"I hear you are a bad boy and get into fights. Never fight, sir, never
fight! But if you do fight, lick your man."

"Yes, sir," said Johnny.

"And don't be afraid to tackle a bigger man than yourself. Only cowards
are afraid to do that!"

"Yes, sir," said Johnny.

"But of course I don't approve of fighting. Only bad boys fight.
Remember that!"

"Yes, sir," said Johnny, and scraped his plate loudly to attract the
attention of old Alfred, his grandfather's man, who, familiar and
friendly from thirty years' service, said, as he brought the desired
flannel cakes, "The little man holds his fork just as you do, sir!" At
which Mr. Smith stopped laughing, and said:

"Miss Sampson ought to teach him better manners."

He did not invite Johnny to supper again, which would have been a relief
to Mary if she had known it; and was just as well, anyhow, for Miss
Lydia, quaking at her own supper table (while Johnny was "holding his
fork" in his grandfather's fashion!) had said to herself, "I'll tell him
to say, 'No, thank you, sir,' if Mr. Smith ever asks him again."

It was about this time that Miss Lydia's landlord softened toward her
sufficiently to bow to her as he passed her house. Once he even stopped
her in the street to ask the particulars of one of Johnny's escapades:
It appeared that a boy--one of the Mack boys, as it happened, who was
always in hot water in Old Chester--got the credit of a smashed sash in
Mr. Steele's greenhouse, which was really Johnny's doing; and in spite
of sniffling denials, the (for once) innocent Mack boy was just about to
get what the irate owner of the sash called a walloping, when Johnny
Smith, breathless, and mad as a hatter, rushed into the greenhou