"She stares at me so hard!" thought Horace—"that's the reason she can't see anything else."—"Please take a chair, ma'am."
"Can't stop to sit down. Is your name Horace S. Clifford?" said the old woman, in a very feeble voice.
Horace looked at her; she had not a tooth in her head.
"Yes, ma'am; my name is Horace Clifford," said he, respectfully. He had great reverence for age, and could keep his mouth from twitching; but I'm sorry to say Prudy's danced up at the corners, and Dotty's opened and showed her back teeth The woman must have had all those clothes made when she was young, for nobody wore such things now; but it wasn't likely she knew that, poor soul!
"Did you go to the 'Brooklyn Eagle' office, to-day, to ad-ver-tise some lost money, little boy?"
"Yes, ma'am.—Why, that advertisement can't have been printed so quick!"
"No, I calculate not. Did you go in with a lady, and a leetle, oneasy, springy kind of a leetle girl?"
"Why, that's me," put in Fly.
"Yes, ma'am—yes; were you there? What do you know about it?"
"Don't be in a hurry, little boy. I want to be safe and sure. I expect you took notice of a young man in a bottle-green coat,—no, a greenish-black coat,—a-sittin' down by the door."