"Who's Dave?" reiterated the little voice half scornfully.--"W'y, Dave's a great big boy! Dave works on Barnes's place. And he kin purt' nigh make a full hand, too. Dave's purt' nigh tall as your pap! He's purt' nigh growed up--Dave is! And--David--Mason--Jeffries," she continued, jauntily teetering her head from left to right, and for the first time introducing that peculiar deliberation of accent and undulating utterance that we afterward found to be her quaintest and most charming characteristic--"and--David--Mason-- Jeffries--he--likes--Mary--Alice--Smith!" And then she broke abruptly into the merriest laughter, and clapped her little palms together till they fairly glowed. "And who's Mary Alice Smith?" clamored a chorus of merry voices. The elfish figure straightened haughtily in the chair. Folding the slender arms tightly across her breast, and tilting her wan face back with an imperious air, she exclaimed sententiously, "W'y, Mary Alice Smith is me--that's who Mary Alice Smith is!" It was not long, however, before her usual bright and infectious humor was restored, and we were soon piloting the little stranger here and there about the house, and laughing at the thousand funny little things she said and did. The winding stairway in the hall quite dazed her with delight. Up and down she went a hundred times, it seemed. And she would talk and whisper to herself, and oftentimes would stop and nestle down and rest her pleased face close against the steps and pat one softly with her slender hand, peering curiously down at us with half-averted eyes. And she counted them and named them, every one, as she went up and down. "I'm mighty glad I'm come to live in this-here house," she said. We asked her why. "Oh, 'cause," she said, starting up the stairs again by an entirely novel and original method of her own--" 'cause Uncle Tomps ner Aunt 'Lizabeth don't live here; and when they ever come here to git their dinners, like they will ef you don't watch out, w'y, then I kin slip out here on these-here stairs and play like I was climbin' up to the Good World where my mother is--that's why!" Then we hushed our laughter, and asked her where her home was, and what it was like, and why she didn't like her Uncle Tomps and Aunt 'Lizabeth, and if she wouldn't want to visit them sometimes.