se to
say, "It was me done it!"--upon which the richly deserved walloping was
handed over to the real culprit. Later, for some private grudge, Johnny
paid it all back to young Mack, but for the moment--"I take my
medicine," said Johnny, showing his teeth. "I don't hide behind another
feller. But you bet I'll smash Andy Steele's hotbed sashes every chance
I get!" Poor little Miss Lydia was frightened to death at such a wicked
remark, and prayed that God would please forgive Johnny; and she was
very bewildered to have Mr. Smith, listening to this dreadful story,
chuckle with delight: "He'll come to a bad end, the scoundrel! Tell him
I say I expect he'll be hanged. I'll give him a quarter for every pane
he broke." After this interview Mr. Smith used to call on Miss Lydia
occasionally just to inquire what was Johnny's latest crime, and once he
invited his tenant to supper, "with your young scamp," his invitation
ran. She went, and wore her blue silk, and sat on the edge of her chair,
watching the grandfather and grandson, while the vein on her thin temple
throbbed with fright. But it took another year of longing for his own
flesh and blood before the new Mr. Smith reached an amazing, though
temporary, decision.

"I'll have him," he said to himself; "I _will_ have him! I'll swallow
the wet hen, if I can't get him any other way. I'll--I'll marry the
woman." . . . But he hesitated for still another month or two, for,
though he wanted his grandson, he did not hanker to make a fool of
himself; and a rich man in the late seventies who marries an impecunious
spinster in the fifties looks rather like a fool.

But when he finally reached the point of swallowing Miss Lydia he lost
no time in walking out from his iron gates one fine afternoon and
banging on her front door with his stick. When she opened it he
announced that he had something he wanted to say. In his own mind, the
words he proposed to speak were to this effect: "I'm going to marry
you--to get the boy." To be sure, he would not express it just that
way--one has to go round Robin Hood's barn in talking to females! So he
began:

"I have been planning more comfortable quarters for you, ma'am, than
this house. More suitable quarters for my--for the boy; and I--" Then he
stopped. Somehow or other, looking at Miss Lydia, sitting there so small
and frightened and brave, he was suddenly ashamed. He could not offer
this gallant soul the indignity of a bribe! "If I can't get th