8 THE FATTED CALF. 



" Mr. Robbins, if you please, I prefer not to 

 tell." She tossed her pretty head, and the two 

 long, dark ringlets, nestling against her soft 

 cheeks, seemed to laugh and taunt him. They 

 were as bewitchingly mischievous as her brown 

 eyes, or the dimples that came and went with her 

 smiles, or even that defiant little toss of her head. 

 The tiny gold beads, too, and the big cameo brooch 

 were leagued together against him. So were her 

 smooth, white shoulders. For in those good old 

 days of Forty-one, the Girl, whose picture (in 

 daguerrotype, of course) is still considered the 

 supreme triumph of New Bedford photography, 

 was in the first bloom of her youth and beauty. 



" Oh, but you're not going to get off so easy ! " 

 said still another voice. " If Dorothy won't tell, 

 we will. You're remembered for putting a flat 

 stone on the top of Daddy Jones's chimney. Yes, 

 and for smoking old Daddy out of his cobbler-shop 

 as if he'd been a poor hunted wood-chuck." 



"And for writing a Bible verse on Daddy Jones's 

 door," cried a lad with a rose in his coat, trying 

 to loom into view from the lee side of a much- 

 hewn turkey. " Don't you remember ? It was 

 when Daddy had got so lazy he never opened his 

 shop till ten in the morning, and the Prodigal and I 

 wrote on his door, "He is not dead, but sleejieth!" 



