scapade by an indignant
Aunt M'riar, corrected, duly washed and fed, and sent to bed sadder and
wiser babies? So few seconds might have made the whole difference.

Or, if that heap of clay had been thrown on the other side of the
trench, on the pavement instead of towards the traffic--why then the
children might have taken all they could carry, and Old Sam would have
countenanced them, in reason, as like as not. But how little one gains
by thinking what might have been! The tale is to tell, and tells that
these things were not otherwise, but thus.

* * * * *

Uncle Moses was in the room on the right of the door, called the
parlour, smoking a pipe with the old friend whose advice had probably
kept him from coming on the parish.

"Aunt M'riar!" said he, tapping his pipe out on the hob, and taking care
the ashes didn't get in the inflammable stove-ornament, "I don't hear
them young customers outside. What's got 'em?"

"Don't you begin to fret and werrit till I tell you to it, Moses. The
children's safe and not in any mischief--no more than usual. Mr. Alibone
seen 'em." For although the world called this friend Affability Bob and
Uncle Moses gave him his christened name, Aunt M'riar always spoke of
him, quite civil-like, thus.

"You see the young nippers, Jerry?" said the old prizefighter; who
always got narvous, as you might say, though scarcely alarmed, when they
got out of sight and hearing; even if it was for no more time than what
an egg takes.

"Jist a step beyond the archway, Mosey," said Mr. Alibone. "Paddlin'
and sloppin' about with the water off o' the shore-pump. It's all clean
water, Mrs. Catchpole, only for a little clay." Aunt M'riar, whose
surname was an intrinsic improbability in the eyes of Public Opinion,
and who was scarcely ever called by it, except by Mr. Jerry, expressed
doubts. So he continued:--"You see, they're sinking for a new shore
clear of the old one. So nothing's been opened into."

"Well," said Aunt M'riar, "I certainly did think the flaviour was being
kep' under wonderful. But now you put it so, I understand. What I say
is--if dirt, then clean dirt; and above all no chemicals!... What's that
you're saying, Uncle Mo?"

"Why, I was a-thinking," said Uncle Moses, who seemed restless, "I _was_
a-thinking, Bob, that you and me might have our pipes outside, being dry
underfoot." For Uncle Moses, being gouty, was ill-shod for wet weather.
He was slippered,