I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on
a visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which
to keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing
nature.

"Have the half-crown in your hand," my mother would direct me, while
making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the
bottom of my knickerbocker pocket; "but of course if he won't take it,
why, you must bring it home again."

I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at
all events, I know he was a kind friend. I, seated in the velvet
chair of state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and
ask me to choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most
murderous looking.

But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair
would shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what
had happened, the trouble would be over. After that we would have tea
together. He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great
garden--for Plaistow in those days was a picturesque village--and out
of the plentiful fruit thereof his housekeeper made the most wonderful
of jams and jellies. Oh, they were good, those teas! Generally our
conversation was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little
girl: not at all the sort of little girl I should have imagined her;
on the contrary, a prankish, wilful little girl, though good company,
I should say, if all the tales he told of her were true. And I am
inclined to think they were, in spite of the fact that my mother, when
I repeated them to her, would laugh, saying she was sure she had no