"Yer bet yer life I don't want no more father in mine. He knocked me down them stairs, and then he went off in a ship, and I don't go a cent on fathers! Say, is this a 'zamination?"
I was a good deal amused and should have felt a little rebuked, had I asked a single question from idle curiosity. "Yes, it's a sort of one, Patsy,—all the kind we have."
"And do I hev to bring any red tape?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, Jim said he bet 't would take an orful lot o' red tape t' git me in."
Here he withdrew with infinite trouble from his ragged pocket an orange, or at least the remains of one, which seemed to have been fiercely dealt with by circumstances.
"Here's an orange I brung yer! It's been skwuz some, but there's more in it."
"Here's an orange I brung yer!"
"Thank you, Patsy." (Forced expression of radiant gratitude.) "Now, let us see! You want to come to the Kindergarten, do you, and learn to be a happy little working boy? But oh, Patsy, I'm like the old woman in the shoe, I have so many children I don't know what to do."