As we passed down the turnpike, between the rows of cheap frame houses, we saw, in the increasing dusk, the ruins of a lane, and the corner of a small, back-yard potato patch, that had been Kingman's field. We hastened through the noisy, treeless village, and boarded the Boston train, rather cross for want of supper.
“I wonder,” said Old Hundred, as we moved out of the station, “whether we'd better go to Young's or the Parker House?”
Mumblety-peg and Middle Age
Old Hundred and I were taking our Saturday afternoon walk in the country—that is, in such suburbanized country as we could achieve in the neighborhood of New York. We had passed innumerable small boys and not a few small girls, but save for an occasional noisy group on a base-ball diamond none of them seemed to be playing any definite games.
“Did we use to wander aimlessly round that way?” asked Old Hundred.
“We did not,” said I. “If it wasn't marbles in spring or tops in autumn it was duck-on-the-rock or stick-knife or——”
“Only we didn't call it stick-knife,” said Old Hundred, “we called it mumblety-peg.”
“We called it stick-knife,” said I.