"You are pouting," she said, "or you'd never be sitting in this room where nobody ever comes. Why, they don't have any fires in here, and nothing to eat. Nunky-Punky says if the sun was to shine in here, the carpet would curl up and get singed. You don't know what it is to be singed, do you? Well, it's the way Mammy Lucindy does the chicken after all the feathers are picked off. She kindles the fire until it blazes, and then holds the chicken in it until all its whiskers are burnt off. You didn't know chickens had whiskers, did you? Well, they have. You'll never find out anything if you mope in the house and pout like this. I didn't know any child could be so hard-headed." [Illustration: "'You are pouting,' she said, 'or you'd never be sitting in this room where nobody ever comes'"] Old Jonas reached out his hand to make a move, and held it suspended in the air while Adelaide was talking to Cally-Lou. "Sanders," he said, after awhile, "do you suppose the child really thinks she's talking to some one. Can she see Cally-Lou?" "Why not?" replied Mr. Sanders placidly. "Folks ain't half as smart when they grow up as they is when they're little children. They shet the'r eyes to one whole side of life. Kin you fling your mind back to the time when your heart was soft, an' your eyes sharp enough for to see what grown people never seed? Tell me that, Jonas." Old Jonas paused over a contemplated move, hesitated and sighed. "Did you ever have little things happen to you," Mr. Sanders went on, frowning a little, "that you never told to anybody? Did you ever dream dreams when you was young that kinder rattled you for the longest, they was so purty and true?" "I think you have me beat, Sanders," responded old Jonas; and no one ever knew whether he referred to the game, or to the dreams. "You think so, maybe, but it's more; I'm a-gwine to make two more moves and wipe you off the face of the earth!" And it happened just as Mr. Sanders said it would; two more moves, and he captured four men, and swept into the royal line where they crown kings. Old Jonas frowned and pushed the men into the box where they were kept, with "I can't play to-day, Sanders; my mind isn't on the game." "Well," said Mr. Sanders, "that's diffunt an' I don't blame you much, for ef that little gal was loose in my house, what games I played would be with her." "Sanders," said old Jonas, with some asperity, "you don't mean to say that a little bit of a child like that would worry you!" "Worry me!" exclaimed Mr. Sanders, with as scornful a look as he could on his bland and benevolent face. "Worry me! why, what on earth do you suppose I'm a-doin' in this house?" "I thought you came to play checkers with me," old Jonas responded.