"The dogs talk in my mama's stories. And she knows their names, too. Unker Wichard! where is ma-a-ma?"
With the blue eyes filling and that blood-curdling sentence on the grieved lips, Richard De Jarnette felt the hair of his flesh rising.
"Philip," he said, hastily, "do you want me to tell you 'Little Red Riding Hood?'"
This was Philip's favorite story, and he swallowed his tears and prepared to listen.
Mr. De Jarnette was not very sure of his ground, but in a general way he remembered the story and with fatal fatuity trusted to be able to supply satisfactory details. Alas for the success of such a scheme! A child's memory for stories is verbal and circumstantial, and a deviation is a crime.
"Once on a time," began Mr. De Jarnette—he was sure of this much—"there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood. I don't know why she was named that. It was almost as odd a name for a girl as 'Alcohol' was for a turtle." This was padding. He had perceived that his other story was too condensed.
"It was 'cause she had a little red cloak with a hood," said Philip. "That's part of the story."
"Of course. I hadn't thought of that." It came to Mr. De Jarnette whimsically that he was sharing the fate of all padders. Philip had instantly picked out the spurious material and thrown it aside.
"Well, this little girl lived with her mother, but she had an old—an old-d—aunt—"
"It was her grandmother," corrected his audience.