in the short period of
years covered by Jimmy Sears's memory--brought a bitter pill of wrath
and dropped it in the youth's brimful cup of woe. As the minutes
dragged wearily along, Jimmy Sears reviewed the story of his thraldom.
He thought of how, in his short-dress days, he had been put to rocking
a cradle; how in his kilted days, there had been ever a baby's calico
dress to consider; how, from his earliest fishing-days, there had been
always a tot tagging after him, throwing sticks and stones in
the water to scare the fish; and how, now in his swimming and
cave-dwelling days, there was a swarm of tow-headed Searses, a
crawler, a creeper, a toddler, a stumbler, and a sneaker to run away
from.

[Illustration: _Throwing sticks in the water to scare the fish_.]

[Illustration:
_A crawler,
A creeper,
A toddler,
A stumbler,
and
A sneaker_.]

As the churn-dasher grew heavier, the wrath in Jimmy's cup began to
sputter, dissolving into that which in his older sister's heart would
have been tears; in Jimmy's heart, it took the form of convulsive
sniffling. The boy could hear his sister clattering the breakfast
dishes in the kitchen. The thing that ground upon his heart was the
firm footfall of Mrs. Jones, a neighbor woman, who was overseeing
the affairs of the household. Jimmy could not remember hearing that
footstep except in times of what seemed to him to be the family's
disgrace. He hated Mrs. Jones because she tried to cool his ire by
describing the superior points of the particular new baby that had
arrived each time she came upon her errands of neighborly mercy. Just
as the yellow granules began to appear in the buttermilk pool on the
churn-top, Jimmy heard a step on the gravel walk behind him. The step
came nearer; when Jimmy lifted his eyes, they glared into the face of
Harold Jones. Choler cooled into surprise, and surprise exploded into
a vapid, grinning "Huh!" which was followed by another "Huh!" that
gurgled out into a real laugh as Jimmy greeted the visitor. The Jones
boy giggled, and Jimmy found his tongue and asked: "Did you ever
churn?" When Harold admitted that he, too, was a slave of the
churn, the freemasonry of Boyville was established. A moment later
Mealy--Harold's title in the Court--was exemplifying the work. When
Mrs. Jones came out of the house to take care of the butter, she saw
her son and Jimmy lying on the grass. Half an hour later the boys in
the barn heard Mrs. Jones's voice calling,--