was pointed and stared at until the arrival of the play-hour relieved him
from his disagreeable situation.

"What kind of folks are these Thomases?" asked Kinch, as he sat beside
Charlie in the playground munching the last of the apple-tart; "what kind
of folks are they? Tell me that, and I can give you some good advice,
may-be."

"Old Mrs. Thomas is a little dried-up old woman, who wears spectacles and
a wig. She isn't of much account--I don't mind her. She's not the trouble;
it's of old Aunt Rachel, I'm thinking. Why, she has threatened to whip me
when I've been there with mother, and she even talks to her sometimes as if
she was a little girl. Lord only knows what she'll do to me when she has me
there by myself. You should just see her and her cat. I really don't know,"
continued Charlie, "which is the worst looking. I hate them both like
poison," and as he concluded, he bit into a piece of bread as fiercely as
if he were already engaged in a desperate battle with aunt Rachel, and was
biting her in self-defence.

"Well," said Kinch, with the air of a person of vast experience in
difficult cases, "I should drown the cat--I'd do that at once--as soon as I
got there; then, let me ask you, has Aunt Rachel got corns?"

"Corns! I wish you could see her shoes," replied Charlie. "Why you could
sail down the river in 'em, they are so large. Yes, she has got corns,
bunions, and rheumatism, and everything else."

"Ah! then," said Kinch, "your way is clear enough if she has got corns. I
should confine myself to operating on them. I should give my whole
attention to her feet. When she attempts to take hold of you, do you jist
come down on her corns, fling your shins about kinder wild, you know, and
let her have it on both feet. You see I've tried that plan, and know by
experience that it works well. Don't you see, you can pass that off as an
accident, and it don't look well to be scratching and biting. As for the
lady of the house, old Mrs. what's-her-name, do you just manage to knock
her wig off before some company, and they'll send you home at once--they'll
hardly give you time to get your hat."

Charlie laid these directions aside in his mind for future application, and
asked,

"What did you do, Kinch, to get away from the people you were with?"

"Don't ask me," said Kinch, laughing; "don't, boy, don't ask me--my
conscience troubles me awful about it sometimes. I fell up stairs with
dishes, and I fell down stairs with