"Of course you don't, Bobby," said Mr. Kincaid cheerfully, "and I'll tell you why. It's because you and I speak the same language, although you're a little boy and I'm a big man." XIII THE PLAYMATES Early that autumn it became expedient that Mrs. Orde and Bobby should visit Grandfather and Grandmother Orde at Redding, while Mr. Orde pushed through certain heavy cutting in the woods. Bobby took with him his two fonts of "real" type--one a parting present from Mr. Daggett--and his Flobert Rifle. The old Orde homestead covered about three acres of ground. The city had grown up around it. The house was a three-storied stone structure, built fifty years before, steep of roof, gabled, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of molasses, cider and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank." And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the "Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the round flower bed; and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two, each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself, it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to brush the sky. Bobby's realization of height ceased short of the reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of their powers. Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.