"You've guessed right," he said; "if you'll promise not to tell anybody,
I'll tell you all about it."

This was readily promised, and the boy who gave his name as John
Burgess, sat down beside Paul, while he, with the frankness of
boyhood, gave a circumstantial account of his father's death, and the
ill-treatment he had met with subsequently.

"Do you come from Wrenville?" asked John, interested. "Why, I've got
relations there. Perhaps you know my cousin, Ben Newcome."

"Is Ben Newcome your cousin? O yes, I know him very well; he's a
first-rate fellow."

"He isn't much like his father."

"Not at all. If he was"--

"You wouldn't like him so well. Uncle talks a little too much out of
the dictionary, and walks so straight that he bends backward. But I say,
Paul, old Mudge deserves to be choked, and Mrs. Mudge should be obliged
to swallow a gallon of her own soup. I don't know but that would be
worse than choking. I wouldn't have stayed so long if I had been in your
place."

"I shouldn't," said Paul, "if it hadn't been for Aunt Lucy."

"Was she an aunt of yours?"