After awhile he took a small basket from the wall, and began to fill it
with his choicest blooms. "You shall have these to take home," he said.
"Now come into the house and get your strawberries."

She followed him reluctantly, turning back several times for one more
long sniff of the delicious fragrance.

She was not at all like the Colonel's ideal of what a little girl
should be, as she sat in one of the high, stiff chairs, enjoying her
strawberries. Her dusty little toes wriggled around in the curls on
Fritz's back, as she used him for a footstool. Her dress was draggled
and dirty, and she kept leaning over to give the dog berries and cream
from the spoon she was eating with herself.

He forgot all this, however, when she began to talk to him.

"My great-aunt Sally Tylah is to our house this mawnin'," she announced,
confidentially. "That's why we came off. Do you know my Aunt Sally
Tylah?"

"Well, slightly!" chuckled the Colonel. "She was my wife's half-sister.
So you don't like her, eh? Well, I don't like her either."

He threw back his head and laughed heartily. The more the child talked
the more entertaining he found her. He did not remember when he had ever
been so amused before as he was by this tiny counterpart of himself.

When the last berry had vanished, she slipped down from the tall chair.

"Do you 'pose it's very late?" she asked, in an anxious voice. "Mom Beck