"Don't you like it, son?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, with an anxious glance at the prostrate warriors. "They aren't deaded, are they?"
"Of course not," said I, restoring the presumably defunct troopers to life by setting them up again. "The only thing that'll dead a soldier like these is to step on him. Try the other gun."
Thus reassured, he did as I bade him, and again the proud paraders went down, this time amid shouts of glee. And so we passed an all too fleeting two hours, that little boy and I. Through the whole list of his famous toys we went, and as well as I could I taught him the delicious uses of each and all of them, until finally he seemed to grow weary, and so, drawing up a big arm-chair before the fire and taking his tired little body into my lap, with his tousled head cuddled up close over the spot where my heart is alleged to be, I started to read a story to him out of one of the many beautiful books that had been provided for him by his generous parents. But I had not gone far when I saw that his attention was wandering.
"Perhaps you'd rather have me tell you a story instead of reading it," said I.
"What's to tell a story?" he asked, fixing his blue eyes gravely upon mine.
"Great Scott, kiddie!" said I, "didn't anybody ever tell you a story?"
"No, sir," he replied sleepily; "I get read to every afternoon by my governess, but nobody ever told me a story."
"Well, just you listen to this," said I, giving him a hearty squeeze. "Once upon a time there was a little boy," I began, "and he lived in a beautiful house not far from the Park, and his daddy—"
"What's a daddy?" asked the child, looking up into my face.