"I'll tell you, Gracie; it's cigars they look like—just the ends of cigars when somebody is smoking."
At that moment the cluster called the "Seven Sisters" was drowned in a soft, white cloud.
"Look," said Grace; "there are some little twinkles gone to sleep, all tucked up in a coverlet. I don't see what makes you think of dirty cigars! They look to me like little specks of gold harps ever so far off, so you can't hear the music. O, Horace, don't you want to be an angel, and play on a beautiful harp?"
"I don't know," said her brother, knitting his brows, and thinking a moment; "when I can't live any longer, you know, then I'd like to go up to heaven; but now, I'd a heap sooner be a soldier!"
"O, Horace, you'd ought to rather be an angel! Besides, you're too little for a soldier!"
"But I grow. Just look at my hands; they're bigger than yours, this minute!"
"Why, Horace Clifford, what makes them so black?"
"O, that's no account! I did it climbin' trees. Barby tried to scour it off, but it sticks. I don't care—soldiers' hands ain't white, are they, Pincher?"
The pretty dog at Horace's feet shook his ears, meaning to say,—
"I should think not, little master; soldiers have very dirty hands, if you say so."