But even Pharaoh’s Horses, for all their fiery eyes and swelling neck veins, could not quite trample the life out of Felix’s love of the beautiful. On rainy holidays, with a plate of ginger cookies at hand, he still liked to peer inside grandmother’s corner cabinet, where she kept the “bug china,” the Mandarin teacups, the thin silver teaspoons, the curiously elaborate sugar-tongs, and the sugar-bowl with a castle on it. If there were no other boys about, he would gladly listen to the old lady’s story of the Lafayette porringer, with its engraving of the marquis on donkey-back. Lafayette in Egypt! It was a tale to invite dreams. Grandma Bradford had two quite different ways of talking. When she spoke of modern things, or read a paper at the Ladies’ Circle, she used her modern manner; but when she talked of old-time things, she generally dropped into a style to correspond. “There I set on the front porch,” she would say, “eatin’ my cold porridge out of the porringer. I was the only girl, and they allus called it I was some indulged. But I guess folks wouldn’t call it that, nowadays! ’Twas a hot evenin’, and Aunt Car’line hed company, and they wanted to talk by theirselves, so she let me set out on the porch with my supper. And when I got it et, I put the porringer up onto the porch jest as car’ful as I could, and begun playin’ with Rover. He was a real young dog, Rover was; a puppy, you might say, but a big dog, too. I dunno how ’tis, but dogs don’t seem to _come_ as big now as they did then! And fust thing I knew, he lep’ up onto the porch, and got that porringer into his maouth, and rushed off downhill, me racin’ after him. And that was the last our family ever saw of it. And Rover never stopped till he got to the brook; it was roarin’ turrible, the brook was, ’cos it had be’n a rainy summer; and the more I called, the more he didn’t hear, but kep’ a-runnin’. And he run and he run, all along the brookside, till he got to the path that led square up to the Ellicksenders’ house, and then he turned up sharp—” Grandma paused for breath, and let Felix take up the familiar tale. “And the Ellicksenders’ house,” recited Felix, with gusto, “was no better than a den of thieves.” “Yes, and jest then I heard Aunt Car’line callin’, and back I flew to the haouse. And when she said, ‘Why, Lydia Fairlee, where is the rest of the porringer?’—oh, my, wa’n’t I scairt? I hope it will be a lesson to _you_, Felix, the way I was too scairt to tell the hull truth. I was scairt o’ bein’ punished, so I told a part-truth, which is a near-lie, same as some boys I know of.” Felix reddened, and deemed it wise to advance the story as hurriedly as possible. “You told her you put it up onto the porch, careful as anything—”