“Makes me feel good, an’ all nicey,” replied Toddie.

“Wouldn’t you feel just as good if I sang, ’Plunged in a gulf of dark despair’?”

“No, don’t like dokdishpairs; if a dokdishpair done anyfing to me, I’d knock it right down dead.”

With this extremely lucid remark, our conversation on this particular subject ended; but I wondered, during a few uneasy moments, whether the temporary mental aberration which had once afflicted Helen’s grandfather and mine was not reappearing in this, his youngest descendant.  My wondering was cut short by Budge, who remarked, in a confident tone:—­

“Now, Uncle Harry, we’ll have the whistles, I guess.”

I acted upon the suggestion, and led the way to the woods.  I had not had occasion to seek a hickory sapling before for years; not since the war, in fact, when I learned how hot a fire small hickory sticks would make.  I had not sought wood for whistles since—­gracious, nearly a quarter of a century ago!  The dissimilar associations called up by these recollections threatened to put me in a frame of mind which might have resulted in a bad poem, had not my nephews kept up a lively succession of questions such as no one but children can ask.  The whistles completed, I was marched, with music, to the place where the “Jacks” grew.  It was just such a place as boys instinctively delight in—­low, damp, and boggy, with a brook hiding treacherously away under overhanging ferns and grasses.  The children knew by sight the plant which bore the “Jacks,” and every discovery was announced by a piercing shriek of delight.  At first I looked hurriedly toward the brook as each yell clove the air; but, as I became accustomed to it, my attention was diverted by some exquisite ferns.  Suddenly, however, a succession of shrieks announced that something was wrong, and across a large fern I saw a small face in a great deal of agony.  Budge was hurrying to the relief of his brother, and was soon as deeply imbedded as Toddie was in the rich black mud, at the bottom of the brook.  I dashed to the rescue, stood astride the brook, and offered a hand to each boy, when a treacherous tuft of grass gave way, and, with a glorious splash, I went in myself.  This accident turned Toddie’s sorrow to laughter, but I can’t say I made light of my misfortune on that account.  To fall into clean water is not pleasant, even when one is trout-fishing; but to be clad in white pants, and suddenly drop nearly knee-deep in the lap of mother Earth is quite a different thing.  I hastily picked up the children, and threw them upon the bank, and then wrathfully strode out myself, and tried to shake myself as I have seen a Newfoundland dog do.  The shake was not a success—­it caused my trouser-leg to flap dismally about my ankles, and sent the streams of loathsome ooze trickling down into my shoes.  My hat, of drab felt, had fallen off by the brookside, and been plentifully spattered as I got out.  I looked at my youngest nephew with speechless indignation.