He got up once easily, he got up a second
time with difficulty, he got up a third time by an heroic effort, the
veins standing out on his forehead. The fourth time he stuck two
inches off the ground.

"'You are old, Father William,'" I quoted.

He rubbed his biceps sadly. "I'm out of practice!" he said with some
asperity. But we tried no more stunts on the apple-tree.

Beyond the orchard was a piece of split-rail fence, gray and old, with
brambles growing at the intersections--one of the relics of an elder
day in Westchester County. Old Hundred looked at it as he put on his
coat.

"There ought to be a bumblebees' nest in that fence," he said. "If we
should poke the bees out we'd find honey, nice gritty honey, all over
rotted wood from our fingers."

"Are you looking for trouble?" I asked. "However, if you hold your
breath, a bee can't sting you."

"I recall that ancient superstition--with pain," he smiled. "Why does
a bee have such a fascination for a boy? Is it because he makes
honey?"

"Not at all; that's a secondary issue. It's because he's a bee," I
answered. "Don't you remember the fun of stoning those gray hornets'
nests which used to be built under the school-house eaves in summer?
We waited till the first recess to plug a stone through 'em, and
nobody could get back in the door without being stung. It was against
the unwritten law to stone the school-house nests in vacation time!"

"Recess!" mused Old Hundred. "Do you know, sometimes in court when the
judge announces a recess (which he pronounces with the accent on the
second syllable, a manifest error), those old school-days come back to
me, and my case drops clean out of my head for the moment."

"I should think that would be embarrassing," said I.

"It isn't," he said, "it's restful. Besides, it often restores my
mislaid sense of humor. I picture the judge out in a school-yard
playing leap-frog with the learned counsel for the prosecution and the
foreman of the jury. It makes 'em more human to see 'em so."

"A Gilbertian idea, to say the least," I smiled. "Why not set the
whole court to playing squat-tag?"

"There was step-tag, too," said Old Hundred. "Remember that? The boy
or girl who was It shut his eyes and counted ten. Then he opened his
eyes suddenly, and if he saw any part of you moving you became It. On
'ten' you tried to freeze into stiffness. We must have struck some
funny attitudes."

"Attitudes," said I, "that was another game. S