“Well, I love Phil and Stuart dearly.  I’m devoted to them, and willing to do anything in my power for their comfort, but I’m free to confess that I don’t understand them.  I never did understand boys.”  Then she tripped over me as I nearly upset us both in my frantic efforts to get out of her way.  “Or monkeys either,” she added, shaking her skirts at me with a displeased “Shoo,” as if I had been a silly old hen.

It was very quiet about the house for a few days, and then some jolly times began in Phil’s room.  As soon as the boys were allowed to visit him I showed them some of my tricks, and kept them in roars of laughter.  I wheeled little Elsie’s doll carriage around the room, and I sat up with the doctor’s pipe in my mouth, I drilled and danced, and performed as if I had been on a stage.  It was wonderful to them, for they had never guessed how much I knew.  One day I sat down in a little rocking-chair with a kitten in my arms, and rocked and hugged it as if it had been a baby.  It wasn’t breathing when I stopped.  The boys said I hugged it too hard, but they kept on bringing me something to rock every day, until five kittens and a rabbit had been put to sleep so soundly that they wouldn’t wake up.

One day Phil was moved into Miss Patricia’s room while his own was being cleaned.  Of course no boys were allowed to go in there with him except Stuart.  They had a good time, for Miss Patricia told them stories and showed them the curious things in her cabinet and gave them sugar-plums out of the big, blue china dragon that always stands on top of it.  But I could see that she was not enjoying their visit.  She was afraid that Stuart’s rockers would bump against her handsome old mahogany furniture, or that they would scratch it in some way, or break some of her fine vases and jardinieres.

After awhile she was called down to the parlour to receive a guest, and there was nothing to amuse the boys.  Time dragged so heavily that Phil begged Stuart to bring his little rubber-gun—­gumbo-shooter he called it.  It was a wide rubber band fastened at each end to the tips of a forked stick shaped like a big Y. They used buckshot to shoot with, nipping up a shot in the middle of the band with thumb and finger, and drawing it back as far as possible before letting it fly.

There was a fire in the grate, so they were comfortably warm even when they opened the window to take turns in shooting at the red berries on the vine just outside.  It was as much as Phil could do, lying on the sofa, to send a buckshot through the open window without hitting the panes above, but Stuart cut a berry neatly from the vine at each trial.

Soon he began to boast of his skill, and aimed his sling at an ancient portrait over the mantel.  It was of a dignified old gentleman in a black stock and powdered wig.  He had keen, eagle eyes like Miss Patricia, which seemed to follow one all around the room.

“I bet I could hit that picture square in the apple of its eye,” he bragged, “right in its eye-ball,—­bim!”