The clubman soon became acquainted with Abby's entire family history, and rapidly realized that the mind of a child was a thing undreamed of in his philosophy. As she pattered on he conversed gravely with her, trying to answer her multitudinous questions. All her world was good save Uncle Moses' wife, and her confidence in the clubman was entire. She admired his clothes, his watch-chain, and his scarf-pin, and ended by directing him to read to her, which McAllister obediently did. None of the magazines seemed to contain suitable articles, so with some misgivings he purchased various colored weeklies, remembering vaguely his own delight in the misadventures of certain chubby ladies and stout gentlemen upon rear pages, perused furtively when waiting at the barber's to get his hair cut as a child. For half an hour her interest remained tense, but then she wearied of using her eyes, and, patting McAllister's fat chin, ordered him to tell her a story. Here was a new difficulty. He had never told a story in his life, but there was no help for it, no escape, as she climbed into his lap. "Begin with once onup-a-time," she ordered. "Well," he obeyed "Once 'onup' a time there was a man who lived in a club----" "A what?" sharply interrupted Abby. "A big white house with heaps of rooms," he corrected. "And as he had nobody dependent on him, all he had to do was to eat and sleep and look at the sky." "Didn't he have any children?" "Nobody in the world," answered McAllister. "Poor man!" sighed Abby. "Didn't he keep any hens?" "Not even a hen!" "I know a big house just like that," said Abby. "Old Captain Barnard used to live in it. Wasn't he lonely?" "Sometimes." "Did anyone live with him?" "His hired man," answered the clubman with a smile, looking down the car to where Wilkins sat in solitary grandeur. "And by and by he got so old and so fat that nobody would marry him, while the wives of other men he knew forgot to ask him to dinner." "Poor dear man!" murmured Abby, "I should think he'd have wished he hadn't been born." "Sometimes he did," answered the story-teller. "And he longed for some people to really care for him, and for some little children to keep him company." "Did he have a cow?" "No, not even a cow." Abby laughed sleepily. "But didn't he ever have any fun?" "He thought he did, but he didn't, really." "I'm awful sorry for him!" said Abby. "If I met him I would give him my white hen." "He used to pay for dinners for people, and send them flowers and candy and go to see them----" "Sunday afternoons?" "Yes; Sunday afternoons." "He was really very nice," said Abby. "Do you think so?" asked McAllister eagerly. "Why, of course. Don't you think so?" "So-so," said the clubman. "But he never hurt anyone?" "No, never." "And gave the hired man plenty of victuals?" "Much more than was good for him," said McAllister with conviction. "I like that man," said Abby. "He was a good man."