And Captain Kerley Kerlerac, such a man as every mother wants her son to be that he might fill her heart and satisfy her love completely—but it is customary to ignore the man in a case like this, or dismiss him with faint praise. The dinner was about half finished when Little Bit, in Orren’s room up-stairs, looked longingly at the candy mints upon the little table and remarked: “All dem eaters down dar makes me feel hongry.” “Me, too. Less eat our candy mints,” Org suggested. “I’ll bet dey’ll make my mouf water when I gits ’em inside,” Little Bit chuckled. “My mouf is been waterin’ jes’ to look at ’em.” Indeed, they did make his mouth water. These candy mints were not what Orren Randolph Gaitskill thought they were. They were shaped like candy mints, but they contained no candy and no mint; they were little wafers, which dropped in water in the finger-bowls, would effervesce, causing the water to bubble and sparkle and look pretty. Both boys grabbed a handful of these things and poured them in their mouths. They tasted sweet. The saliva moistened them, and suddenly one of them exploded in each mouth. It was a very slight explosion, just enough to cause all the tablets to crumble into tiny pieces and get under their tongues and between their teeth, and fill the entire cavity of the mouth like an expanding balloon. When the explosion occurred in Little Bit’s mouth, that little darky felt like the whole top of his head had been blown off, and he opened his mouth and uttered a startled bellow. Then in both mouths, each little globule began to explode as the moisture penetrated it. Half a dozen popped under each tongue, several cracked between the teeth of the boys, and the vibration of the nerves of the teeth made them feel as if there was a sound like a pistol shot at each tiny explosion. “Poison!” Org gurgled. “P’ison!” Little Bit seconded. The two boys decided that they needed expert medical attention at once. Dr. Moseley was down in the dining-room. They would not wait for him to come up; they would go down to him! They ran down the hall and galloped down the back steps, their feet making as much racket as a pair of mules crossing the gangplank of a steamboat. They burst into the dining-room, foaming at the mouth, their frothy tongues protruding, gargling their words as they tried to speak. Little Bit, his coal-black face smeared with foamy white bubbles, looked like he had swallowed the handle of a shaving brush and left the soapy end sticking out! “I’m poisoned!” Org gargled. “My Gawd! I’m p’isoned!” Little Bit squalled. Simultaneously with the startling advent of the children in the dining-room, there came a scream, so shrill, so terror-fraught, so penetrating, that all the guests sprang to their feet in consternation. From the kitchen, Dazzle Zenor’s voice sounded like a steam whistle: “Oh, my Gawd! A alligator is tryin’ to git in dis kitchen!”