y
of this volume I am willing to sell my birthmark for a mess of potash
any day of the week.'

"'That,' she says, cheerful, 'is spoke like a financier and a
gentleman.'

"With that she started for the front room, but just then the door swung
open, and out came her ma and Sammy, tired with fatigue, but satisfied.

"'What!' says the young daughter, 'is the tie untied? Is the jawfest
concluded?'

"'It is,' says the maternal ancestor of that girl, weak but happy. 'We
talked seven miles and six furloughs, but I won. He has renounced his
sin. He ain't no son of no author. I've boughten his book.'

"I gazed at Sammy with a moist, reproachful eye.

"'Sammy! Sammy!' I says, shaking my head, 'to think----'

"'Hush!' he says, 'don't say it. I ain't no Sammy. I ain't no Mills.
Them is not my name.'

"'Alas!' I says, mournful, 'am I then deceived since childhood's happy
hours?'

"I see the respectable old lady pricking up her ears and getting
ready for another season of conversation. Sammy likewise made the same
observation, and he fended off the deadly blow.

"'Yes,' he says, 'I have deceived you. My name is----'

"He stopped and looked doubtful and perplexed, and scratched his ear
with his forepaw.

"'My name is----' he says, and stops, and then he turns to the elderly
female, and asks desperate: 'What in tunket did I say my name was?'

"'Hewlitt,' she says, 'Eliph' Hewlitt.'

"'Oh, yes!' says Sammy, 'that's it. I guess I'll just write that down,
so as to have it handy. You know,' he says, looking at me, 'my memory's
awful bad since I had the scarlet fever. It's terrible. Why, when I come
in here I knowed I had SOMETHING to say about this book, and I tried to
remember, and I seemed to remember that I was the son of the author who
authored it. I never come so near lying in my life. I'm all in a tremble
over it to think how near to lying I was! An' I got the notion Eliph'
Hewlitt was the name of a horse.'

"'Ma,' says Katie, giving me a wicked smile, 'this here other young
man has got a bad scarlet fever memory, too. HE'S come near to lying,
likewise. You'd ought to speak a few words of helpfulness with him,
too!'

"'Now, here,' I says, 'you pass that by, Katie. All that that I said was
a novel I was thinking of writing out when I got my full growth, which
I told you to pass the time away whiles this What's-his-name was busy. I
never wrote nothing!'

"'Well,' she says, 'you don't look as if you had the sense t