udest silken lap and the humblest one
of calico, and carried his eyelashes and small aches elsewhere. I think
that a secret fear of his alarming frankness, and his steady rejection
of the various tempting cates they offered him, had much to do with
their passion. "It won't hurt you, dear," said Miss Circe, "and it's so
awfully nice. See!" she continued, putting one of the delicacies in
her own pretty mouth with every assumption of delight. "It's SO good!"
Johnnyboy rested his elbows on her knees, and watched her with a grieved
and commiserating superiority. "Bimeby, you'll have pains in youse
tommick, and you'll be tookt to bed," he said sadly, "and then
you'll--have to dit up and"--But as it was found necessary here to
repress further details, he escaped other temptation.

Two hours later, as Miss Circe was seated in the drawing-room with her
usual circle of enthusiastic admirers around her, Johnnyboy--who was
issued from his room for circulation, two or three times a day, as a
genteel advertisement of his parents--floated into the apartment in a
new dress and a serious demeanor. Sidling up to Miss Circe he laid a
phial--evidently his own pet medicine--on her lap, said, "For youse
tommikake to-night," and vanished. Yet I have reason to believe that
this slight evidence of unusual remembrance on Johnnyboy's part more
than compensated for its publicity, and for a few days Miss Circe was
quite "set up" by it.

It was through some sympathy of this kind that I first gained
Johnnyboy's good graces. I had been presented with a small pocket case
of homoeopathic medicines, and one day on the beach I took out one of
the tiny phials and, dropping two or three of the still tinier pellets
in my hand, swallowed them. To my embarrassment, a small hand presently
grasped my trouser-leg. I looked down; it was Johnnyboy, in a new and
ravishing smuggler suit, with his questioning eyes fixed on mine.

"Howjer do dat?"

"Eh?"

"Wajer do dat for?"

"That?--Oh, that's medicine. I've got a headache."

He searched the inmost depths of my soul with his wonderful eyes. Then,
after a pause, he held out his baby palm.

"You kin give Johnny some."

"But you haven't got headache--have you?"

"Me alluz has."

"Not ALWAYS."

He nodded his head rapidly. Then added slowly, and with great
elaboration, "Et mo'nins, et affernoons, et nights, 'nd mo'nins adain.
'N et becker" (i. e., breakfast).

There was no doubt it was the truth. Those ey