“Can’t find my dolly’s k’adle,” he whined.

“Never mind, old pet,” said I, soothingly.  “Uncle will ride you on his foot.”

“But I want my dolly’s k’adle,” said he, piteously rolling out his lower lip.

I remembered my experience when Toddie wanted to “shee wheels go wound,” and I trembled.

“Toddie,” said I, in a tone so persuasive that it would be worth thousands a year to me, as a salesman, if I could only command it at will; “Toddie, don’t you want to ride on uncle’s back?”

“No:  want my dolly’s k’adle.”

“Don’t you want me to tell you a story?”

For a moment Toddie’s face indicated a terrible internal conflict between old Adam and mother Eve, but curiosity finally overpowered natural depravity, and Toddie murmured:—­

“Yesh.”

“What shall I tell you about?”

“’Bout Nawndeark.”

“About what?”

“He means Noah an’ the ark,” exclaimed Budge.

“Datsh what I shay—­Nawndeark,” declared Toddie.

“Well,” said I, hastily refreshing my memory by picking up the Bible,—­for Helen, like most people, is pretty sure to forget to pack her Bible when she runs away from home for a few days,—­ “well, once it rained forty days and nights, and everybody was drowned from the face of the earth excepting Noah, a righteous man, who was saved, with all his family, in an ark which the Lord commanded him to build.”

“Uncle Harry,” said Budge, after contemplating me with open eyes and mouth for at least two minutes after I had finished, “do you think that’s Noah?”

“Certainly, Budge; here’s the whole story in the Bible.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s Noah one single bit,” said he, with increasing emphasis.

“I’m. beginning to think we read different Bibles, Budge; but let’s hear your version.”

“Huh?”

“Tell me about Noah, if you know so much about him.”

“I will, if you want me to.  Once the Lord felt so uncomfortable cos folks was bad that he was sorry he ever made anybody, or any world or anything.  But Noah wasn’t bad—­the Lord liked him first-rate, so he told Noah to build a big ark, and then the Lord would make it rain so everybody should be drownded but Noah an’ his little boys an’ girls, an’ doggies an’ pussies an’ mama-cows an’ little-boy-cows an’ little-girl-cows an’ hosses an’ everything—­ they’d go in the ark an’ wouldn’t get wetted a bit, when it rained.  An’ Noah took lots of things to eat in the ark—­cookies, an’ milk, an’ oatmeal, an’ strawberries, an’ porgies, an’—­oh, yes; an’ plum-puddin’s an’ pumpkin-pies.  But Noah didn’t want everybody to get drownded, so he talked to folks an’ said, ’It’s goin’ to rain awful pretty soon; you’d better be good, an’ then the Lord’ll let you come into my ark.’  An’ they jus’ said, ’Oh, if it rains we’ll go in the house till it stops;’ an’ other folks