“Good-morning, Mac!” he called blithely.

“How do you do?” The voice was a shade more subdued, to-day.

“Well.  What are you doing?”

“Nofing much.”  The minor key was still evident.

“Are you sick?”

“No; ’course not.”

“Playing Indian?”

Mac shook his head.

“What is the blanket for, then?  It isn’t cold, to-day.”

The lips drooped, and the blue eyes peered out suspiciously from under their long lashes.

“I wants to wear it,” he said, with crushing dignity.

“All right.  Come and walk to the corner fruit stand with me.”

The invitation was too tempting to be refused, and Mac scrambled to his feet.  As he did so, the blanket slipped to one side.  Swiftly Mac huddled it around him again; but the momentary glimpse had sufficed to show the stranger a dark blue gown and a white apron above it.

“Why, I thought you were a boy!” he gasped, too astonished at this sudden transformation to pay any heed to Mac’s probable feelings in the matter.

“So I are a boy.”

“But you are wearing a dress.”

Mac hung his head.

“I ran away,” he faltered.  “Vat’s why.”

The stranger tried to look grave.  Instead, he burst into a shout of laughter.

“I think I understand,” he said, as soon as he could speak.  “You have to wear these clothes, because you ran away, and the blanket is to cover them up.  What made you run away?”

“Aunt Teddy.”

“Who?”

“My Aunt Teddy.”

“Is it—­a woman?” The stranger began to wonder if it were hereditary in Mac’s family to confound the genders in such ways as this.

“Yes, she is my aunt; she’s a woman, not an uncle.”

“Oh.  It’s a curious name.”

“Ve rest of her name is Farrington,” Mac explained, pulling the blanket closer about his chubby legs, as he saw some people coming up the street toward him.

“And she made you run away?”

Mac nodded till his cheeks shook like a mould of currant jelly.

“What did she do?”

“Talk, and talk some more, all ve time.  I want to talk some, and I can’t.  She eats her eggs oh natural.”

“What?  What does that mean?”

“’Vout any salt.  Vat’s what she calls it, oh natural.  I like salt.”

“Don’t you like grapes?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get some.”

Wrapped like an Indian brave, Mac started off down the street, his yellow and blue toga trailing behind him and getting under his feet at every step.  His dignity, nevertheless, was perfect and able to triumph over even such untoward circumstances as these, and he accepted the stranger’s conversational attempts with a lofty courtesy which suggested a reversal of their relative ages.  Just as the corner was reached, however, and the fruit stand was but a biscuit-toss away, he suddenly collapsed.