"I give it up," said the clubman.
"We have a black horse on our farm," she continued. "It used to be a girl, but now it's a boy."
"Indeed!" exclaimed McAllister.
"Yes, aunt had her tail cut off. Boys have short hair, you know—that's how you tell."
At this Wilkins disappeared rapidly into the background.
"Uncle Moses' wife don't love children," the child continued. "She has the rheumatiz in her thigh."
"But she must like you, Abby," urged her new friend.
"No, she don't. She don't love me 'cause I love Aunt Abby, an' Aunt Abby don't love her."
"I see," said McAllister.
The clubman soon became acquainted with Abby's entire family history, and rapidly realized that the mind of a child was a thing undreamed of in his philosophy. As she pattered on he conversed gravely with her, trying to answer her multitudinous questions. All her world was good save Uncle Moses' wife, and her confidence in the clubman was entire. She admired his clothes, his watch-chain, and his scarf-pin, and ended by directing him to read to her, which McAllister obediently did. None of the magazines seemed to contain suitable articles, so with some misgivings he purchased various colored weeklies, remembering vaguely his own delight in the misadventures of certain chubby ladies and stout gentlemen upon rear pages, perused furtively when waiting at the barber's to get his hair cut as a child. For half an hour her interest remained tense, but then she wearied of using her eyes, and, patting McAllister's fat chin, ordered him to tell her a story. Here was a new difficulty. He had never told a story in his life, but there was no help for it, no escape, as she climbed into his lap.