“H’m!” grunted Mr. Burton.

“An’ you might take fings to eat wif you,” suggested Toddie, “an’ when you got real tired and felt bad, you might stop and have a little picnic.  I fink that would be dzust the fing for a man wif the toothache.  And we could help you lotsh.”

“I’ll see how I feel after dinner,” said Mr. Burton.  “But what are you going to do for me between now and then, to make me feel better?”

“We tell you storiezh,” said Toddie. “Them’s what sick folks alwayzh likesh.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Burton.  “Begin right away.”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie.  “Do you want a sad story or a d’zolly one?”

“Anything,” said Mr. Burton.  “Men with the toothache can stand nearly anything.  Don’t draw on your imagination too hard.”

“Don’t never draw on madzinasuns,” said Toddie; “I only draws on slatesh.”

“Never mind; give us the story.”

“Well,” said Toddie, seating himself in a rocking-chair, and fixing his eyes on the ceiling, “guesh I’ll tell about AbrahammynIsaac.  Onesh the Lord told a man named Abraham to go up the mountain an’ chop his little boy’s froat open an’ burn him up on a naltar.  So Abraham started to go to do it.  An’ he made his little boy Isaac, that he was going to chop and burn up carry the kindlin’ wood he was goin’ to set him a-fire wiz.  An’ I want to know if you fink that wazh very nysh of him?”

“Well,—­no,” said Mr. Burton.

“Tell you what,” said Budge, “you don’t ever catch me carryin’ sticks up the mountain, even if my papa wants me to.”

“When they got up there,” said Toddie, “Abraham made a naltar an’ put little Ikey on it, an’ took a knife an’ was goin’ to chop his froat open, when a andzel came out of hebben an’ said:  ‘Stop a-doin’ that.’  So Abraham stopped, an’ Ikey skooted; an’ Abraham saw a sheep caught in the bushes, an’ he caught him an’ killed him.  He wasn’t goin’ to climb way up a mountain to kill somebody an’ not have his knife bluggy a bit.  An’ he burned the sheep up.  An’ then he went home again.”

“I’ll bet you Isaac’s mamma never knew what his papa wanted to do with him,” said Budge, “or she’d never let her little boy go away in the mornin’.  Do you want to bet?”

“N—­no, not on Sunday, I guess,” said Mr. Burton.  “Now, suppose you little boys go out of doors and play for a while, while uncle tries to get a nap.”

The boys accepted the suggestion and disappeared.  Half an hour later, as Mrs. Burton was walking home from church under escort of old General Porcupine, and enduring with saintly fortitude the general’s compliments upon her management of the children, there came screams of fear and anguish from the general’s own grounds, which the couple were passing.

“Who can that be?” exclaimed the general, his short hairs bristling like the quills of his titular godfather. “We have no children.”