"My mama always jumps at me, and kisses me, and eats me up," he announced in a dignified manner. He felt distinctly defrauded. "The end is always the best part of my mama's stories." What merciless critics children are! How by instinct they see the weak point and how unerringly they strike for it! They rocked in silence for a while and then Philip asked in a polite tone in which there was still a note of hope, "Do you know Bible stories any better than you do this kind, Unker Wichard?" He was willing to give his uncle another chance. But that humiliated gentleman was forced to acknowledge that he knew even less about Bible stories than the kind he had been relating. "Then I guess I'll go to sleep," his nephew decided, with unflattering renunciation. But sleep was hard to woo to-night. "I do shut 'em tight and tight and tight. But they fly open." Then after a further trial, "Unker Wichard, I can't never go to sleep without kissing mama." "Philip, suppose you tell me a Bible story," suggested Mr. De Jarnette, hurriedly. "What do you know?" Philip reflected. A story of his telling would keep his uncle there just the same. "I know 'Moses in the Bulwushes.'" "That will do nicely. Wait a minute. Let me turn down the light. Now I'll rock you while you tell it. Go on." "Well--Once there was a little boy named Moses. And he looked thes like me." "Oughtn't you to say, 'Once upon a time'?" suggested his uncle, maliciously. "Why, no, sir! Not with Bible stories." "Oh!" "You have to say, 'Once there was a little boy named Moses.' And my mama says he looked thes like me. He was so sweet--and so sweet--and so sweet! His mama used ter kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and--" "There! she's kissed him enough now. Go on." "Well, there was a wicked man in that country and he was going to take all the little chilwuns from their mamas." "Where was that country?" "I don't know, sir. I asked mama where it was and she said she guessed it was Washington." "Humph!" "But I don't believe it was, though, 'cause Gwandma Pennybacker thes laughed the way she does when mama is fooling. But anyway he was a' awful bad man, 'cause he wanted to take the chilwuns from their mamas." He waited a moment for indorsement of this sentiment, and receiving none, asked, "Ain't that wicked, Unker Wichard?" "Supposed to be--yes." "Well--Moses's mother didn't want him to get her little boy, so she hid him--in the bulwushes. She did! I know she did, 'cause my mama said so. And-d, she set the basket down in the bulwushes at the edge of the wiver--Black Wiver--wight where the fwogs and the turkles was. Unker Wichard, once I was Moses!" "Indeed? In a former incarnation, I suppose." "No, sir. It wasn't in a carnation, at all. It was in a basket. And it was on a wiver." "Philip, what are you talking about?"