Meantime, Dick Lee was led home to a capital supper of his own, and as soon as that was over he was rigged out in his Sunday clothes,—red silk neck-tie and all,—and invited to tell the story of his adventures to a roomful of admiring neighbors.
He told it well, modestly ascribing pretty much everything to Dab Kinzer; but there was no reason, in anything he said, for one of his father's friends to ask, next morning:
"Bill Lee, does you mean for to say as dem boys run down de French steamah in dat ar' boat?"
"Not dat, not zackly."
"'Cause, if you does, I jes' want to say I's been down a-lookin' at her, and she aint even snubbed her bowsprit."
(To be continued.)
GERTY.
By Margaret W. Hamilton.
Ugh! How cold it was!—sleet driving in your face, wind whistling about your ears, cold penetrating everywhere! "A regular nipper," thought Dick Kelsey, standing in a door-way, kicking his feet in toeless boots to warm them, and blowing his chilled fingers, for in the pockets of his ragged trousers the keen air had stiffened them. He was revolving a weighty question in his mind. Which should he do,—go down to "Ma'am Vesey's" and get one of her hot mutton pies, or stray a little farther up the alley, where an old sailor kept a little coffee-house for the benefit of newsboys and boot-blacks such as he? Should it be coffee or mutton pie?