Page:Explorers of the Dawn (February 1922).djvu/112

Rh my kitchen you're very much mistook. . . Aw, it's a darlin' wee thing, isn't it?" For the Scotty, seeing that she had seated herself, had jumped to her lap and now sat there, nose in air, looking superbly at home.

We closed about her, telling, in chorus, the story of the bullet-headed boy, and the garbage heap, and enlarging dramatically on the episode of the tin can.

"And may we please keep him?" we entreated, "just for a few days till we find the owner of it! Mrs. Handsomebody will never know, for he can live in the coal cellar 'cept when we take him little walks on a string!"

"If you don't let me do this I'll never marry you, so there!" This from Angel.

"Have it your own way, thin," moaned Mary Ellen, capitulating, as usual, under the fire of Angel's pleading, "but moind, if she iver finds us out, it's mesilf will be walkin' the streets widout a character."

So began a merry interlude in the drabness of the Handsomebody régime. Mrs. Handsomebody kept to her room for nearly three weeks, unable to put her foot to the floor. On the first evening, she called us to her bedside; and, while we stood in a row, bewildered before the phenom-