“N—­no,” Allyn answered meditatively; “I hate morals, as a general thing; but I don’t seem to mind this.  It’s too sensible.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mac was at his evening devotions.

“And not squeal at Aunt Phebe, A-ah-nen!” he concluded in a gusty sforzando. Then he reached up and took his mother’s face between his two pink palms.  “I hit Aunt Phebe, to-day, mamma.  Vat was very naughty; but I ’scused her, so it don’t make any matter.”

The fact was that Mac and his Aunt Phebe were not on intimate terms.  Never fond of children and none too fond of being disturbed in the pursuit of her varying hobbies, Phebe had scant patience with the vagaries of her small nephew.  His ingratiating ways annoyed her; his shrill babble distracted her; her sense of order revolted at the omnipresent pails of sand which marked his pathway.  Mac was revelling, that summer, in the possession of unlimited supplies of sand, and, not content with having it on the beach, he surreptitiously lugged it up to Valhalla and constructed little amateur beaches wherever he could escape from Phebe’s searching eyes.

Phebe protested loudly over the beaches.  They were in the way; they rendered it unsafe to cross the floors, since they had a trick of appearing in new and unsuspected localities.  Moreover, they afforded a source of constant interest to Melchisedek, who appeared to be secreting an anatomical collection beneath them, and spent long hours on guard above his latest addition to his hoard.  It offended Phebe to be growled at, just at the moment when her foot struck a heap of sand and bones which should have had no place in a well-ordered home; it offended her still more to listen to Mac’s shrill unbraidings, when he found her ruthlessly sweeping the whole deposit out of doors.  Hence Mac’s blow.  Hence his forgiveness.

“I wish you were my brother, and I would see if this couldn’t be stopped,” Phebe had said, in the fulness of her wrath.

Mac surveyed her blandly.

“But I don’t want you for a brovver.  You’re nofing but a girl, and if I had a little brovver, I’d ravver have a he-brovver,” he returned dispassionately.

“All the same, I’d make you mind me,” she said vengefully, as she gave the broom a final flirt.

“But you doesn’t own me, Aunt Babe; every one else doesn’t own me, just myse’f.”

What remote memory of past Sunday stories had asserted itself, the next day, it would be impossible to tell; but Mac suddenly projected himself into the long-ago, and out from the long-ago he addressed Phebe.

“You are Pharaoh, you know, and you kills babies.”

“Don’t be silly, Mac.”  Phebe was writing a letter and was in no mood for historical conversation.

Sitting on the floor at her feet, Mac clasped his shabby brownie to his breast.

“Yes, you are Pharaoh, you know; naughty old Pharaoh!  But you wouldn’t kill vis little baby; would you, Pharaoh?”