the odors of great heaps of leather and spices and dry goods as he passed
the open doorways,--odors that mixed pleasantly with the smell of the
freshly watered streets. When he stepped into a crockery store to make his
purchase a sense of pleasure-taking did not fail him, and he fell
naturally into talk with the clerk about the weather and such pastoral
topics. Even when he reached the establishment where his own business days
were passed some glamour seemed to be cast upon familiar objects. To the
disenchanted eye all things were as they were on all other dullish days of
summer, even to the accustomed bore leaning up against his favorite desk
and transfixing his habitual victim with his usual theme. Yet to the gaze
of this pleasure-taker all was subtly changed, and he shook hands right
and left as he entered, to the marked surprise of the objects of his
effusion. He had merely come to get some newspapers to help pass away the
long moments on the wharf, and when he had found these, he hurried back
thither to hear what had happened during his absence.

It seemed that there had hardly ever been such an eventful period in the
lives of the family before, and he listened to a minute account of it from
Cousin Lucy. "You know, Frank," says she, "that Sallie's one idea in life
is to keep the baby from getting the whooping-cough, and I declare that
these premises have done nothing but reecho with the most dolorous whoops
ever since you've been gone, so that at times, in my fear that Sallie
would think I'd been careless about the boy, I've been ready to throw
myself into the water, and nothing's prevented me but the doubt whether it
wouldn't be better to throw in the whoopers instead."

At this moment a pale little girl, with a face wan and sad through all its
dirt, came and stood in the doorway nearest the baby, and in another
instant she had burst into a whoop so terrific that, if she had meant to
have his scalp next it could not have been more dreadful. Then she