"Will she rot?" he asked, after surveying the bitch and commenting approvingly upon various points of perfection only patent to the eyes of a fancier. "Will she rot?" "Not till she's dead, I hope," I replied in all innocence. "Pool! thou ninny. Will she tak' rotten?" and I gathered that he meant rats. "She could if she liked," I asseverated boldly, seeing that this was expected of her. "But, you see, she has the best of everything at the Manse. I share my porridge with her night and morning." "Porridge!" sniffed Ephraim disdainfully. "It's rotten she wants, and rabbits. Han you a ferret" I confessed with shame that I had not. "Well, I han." And Ephraim produced from his jacket pocket a long white, snakey, writhing thing that eyed me viciously, but which curled and cuddled about Ephraim as if it loved him, as I don't doubt it did. "That's the cliverest ferret this side o' Owdham," observed Ephraim in a tone that challenged contradiction. "Just yo' feel the weight on him," and he held out the creature in the palm of his hands. It eyed me as though to determine which was the juiciest part of my anatomy, and I declined the intimate acquaintance Ephraim was willing to press upon me. "Feart o' a ferret!" he sneered. "Tha'rt noan as gam' as thi feyther." "What do you know of my father?" I asked quickly, for even as a lad I was jealous of that good man's name and fame. "Why more, happen, than yo think, though I am a Burnplatter. Hasn't he been to th' Burnplatts preichin' time an' time agen, though we'n towd him plain we don't want him? An' hasn't he towd us to our faces wheer we're bun to end if we don't mend our ways? Didn't he plump down on his knees i' th' very midst o' us, an' pray to heaven to remove the scales fro' our eyes, as he ca'd it? An' didn't he come neet after neet to sit an' pray wi' little Lil when she were down wi' th' sma' pox, an' owd Jackson th' Slowit passon, wouldn't come within a mile o' Burnplatts for love or money? Oh! he's a gam' 'un, is thi feyther. He wouldn't be feart o' a bit o' a ferret, aw'll be bun. Why he'd tak' it bi' th' scruff o' th' neck an' dip it th' font if he thowt it 'ud do it onny guid. That's th' sort he is." This hearty commendation of my sire atoned no little for the slighting opinion Ephraim had evidently formed of myself--that and his approval of Tear'em for whom he volunteered to swop that wretch ferret, assuring me with tears in his eyes that the exchange would well-nigh--he said "welly"--ruin him, and that it was only the high regard he entertained for my father that prompted him to make this huge sacrifice. But part with Tear'em I would not. On this point I was adamant.