"Where's the dog now?"
"Dead. Run over by a street car. I cried for months. I don't expect to ever own another like Serena."
John Thomas drew a long breath, and turning to his box began a search for a leather hinge.
Miss Billy felt herself distinctly dismissed, but she still held on to the fence.
"I want to ask you,—" she began again,—"what I can do about a flower bed that's just all stones. I'm trying to dig it, you know."
"Take the stones out," said John Thomas laconically.
"But there wouldn't be anything left! It's all stones!"
"Maybe it's just a fillin', an' there's good dirt underneath," suggested the boy.
"Won't you please step over and look at it?" entreated Miss Billy: so John Thomas, with open reluctance, laid down his hammer and nails, and climbed as awkwardly as possible over the fence.
"If it's fillin' it goes awful deep," he decided, after a quarter of an hour of hard work. "Nothin' can't grow in here."