a
very little girl with very blue eyes and a disgracefully rough shock of
golden curls has just been told of those rats, and has resolved to add
to their number--having power to do so, like a Committee--when she comes
to retell the tale to her elder brother; and then they will both--and
this is the strangest of all!--they will both go and make a noisy and
excited application to an authority to have it confirmed or
contradicted. And this authority will be that girl who sat on that deck
beneath the stars, and listened to the bells sounding the hours through
the night, to keep the ship's time for a forgotten crew, on a ship that
may have gone to the bottom many a year ago, on its return voyage home
perhaps--who knows?

Before Dave heard Dolly's version of the rats, he had a tale of his own
to tell, coming in just after Mrs. Burr had departed. As he was excited
by the event he was yearning to narrate, he did not put it so lucidly as
he might have done. He said:--"Oy saw the lady, and another lady, and
another lady, all in one carriage. And they see me. And the lady"--he
still pronounced this word _loydy_--"she see me on the poyvement, and
'Stop' she says. And then she says, 'You're Doyvy, oyn't you, that had
the ax-nent?' I says these was my books I took to scrool...."

"Didn't you _say_ you was Davy?" said Uncle Mo. And Aunt M'riar she
actually said:--"Well, I never!--not to tell the lady who you was!"

Dave was perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one to the
other. "The loydy said I _was_ Doyvy," said he, in a slightly injured
tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that he had been guilty of
discourtesy.

"In course the lady knew, and knew correct," said Uncle Mo, drawing a
distinction which is too often overlooked. "Cut along and tell us some
more. What more did the lady say?"

Dave concentrated his intelligence powerfully on accuracy:--"The loydy
said to the yuther loydy--the be-yhooterful loydy...."

"Oh, there was a beautiful lady, was there?"

Dave nodded excessively, and continued:--"Said here's a friend of mine,
Doyvy Wardle, and they was coming to poy a visit to, to-morrow
afternoon."

"And what did the other lady say?"

Dave gathered himself together for an effort of intense fidelity:--"She
said--she said--'He's much too dirty to kiss in the open street'--she
said, 'and better not to touch.' Yorce!" He seemed magnanimous towards
Gwen, in spite of her finical delicacy.

Aunt M'riar tur