of speaking, from the
beginning, or nigh upon it. Little Dave, he's sort of kept me a-going
from the early days, afore we buried his poor father--my brother David,
you see. He died down this same Court, four year back, afore little
Dolly was good for much, to look at.... They all right, M'riar?"

"They're making a nice racket," said Aunt M'riar. "So I lay there ain't
much wrong with _them_." She picked up a piece of work to go on with,
and explored a box for a button to meet its views. Evidently a garment
of Dolly's. Probably this was a slack season for the higher needlework,
and the getting up of fine linen was below par.

Uncle Mo resumed:--"So perhaps you're right to put it they are like my
own children, and M'riar's." He was so chivalrously anxious not to
exclude his co-guardian from her rights that he might have laid himself
open to be misunderstood by a stranger. Miss Grahame understood him,
however. So she did, thoroughly, when he went on:--"I don't take at all
kindly, though, to their growing older. Can't be helped, I suppose.
There's a many peculiar starts in this here world, and him as don't
like 'em just has to lump 'em. As I look at it, changes are things one
has to put up with. If we had been handy when we was first made, we
might have got our idears attended to, to oblige. Things are fixtures,
now."

Miss Grahame laughed, and abstained consciously from referring to the
inscrutable decrees of Providence which called aloud for recognition.
"Of course, children shouldn't grow," she said. "I should like them to
remain three, especially the backs of their necks." Uncle Mo's
benevolent countenance shone with an unholy cannibalism, as he nodded a
mute approval. There was something very funny to his hearer in this old
man's love of children, and his professional engagements of former
years, looked at together.

Aunt M'riar took the subject _au serieux_. "Now you're talking silly,
Mo," she said. "If the children never grew, where would the girls be?
And a nice complainin' you men would make then!"

Miss Grahame made an effort to get away from abstract Philosophy. "I'm
afraid it can't be helped now, anyhow," said she. "Dave _is_ growing,
and means to be a man. Oh dear--he'll be a man before we know it. He'll
be able to read and write in a few months."

Uncle Mo's face showed a cloud. "Do ye really think that, ma'am?" he
said. "Well--I'm afeared you may be right." He looked so dreadfully
downcast at this, that