This product of the disgustingly prolific lower classes beheld the smart rig halted before the house and was seized with an exasperating interest. Now every one who has been a boy, or who owns a boy, appreciates that while sisters are, generally speaking, of no earthly consequence or account whatsoever, there are girls and _girls_! This is better explained by studying the behavior of such a boy in propinquity with a feminine stranger who had first been properly starched and ironed and curled and furbelowed, though not conventionally introduced. The boy does not place his feet upon the surface of the world in a methodical, orderly manner, maintaining himself in a status of physical poise and bodily rectitude. He demonstrates the difference between girls and _girls_ by the knots in which he proceeds to tie his spine. No boy ties his spine into knots for his sister. So Nat made his first concessions to The Sex by starting to wind himself in and out through the holes where pickets were missing in his father’s fence. I forego a record of the twistings and turnings, the writhings and contortions, which ensued to attract the attention of the Fayre Ladye and bind her to his chariot forever. He did not neglect to rub his backbone on the gatepost four times, whirl about without upsetting himself three, hit the trunk of an adjacent tree with stones twice, and balance a stick on his nose once. Then he climbed the gate and swung head downward in horrible danger of dashing out his brains. “Lo!” he greeted. And he grinned. The crass effrontery, the _lèse-majesté_, of daring to address Her Royal Highness was bad enough. But that grin! Bernice-Theresa Gridley sat stunned. She could conjure up no phase of etiquette for meeting the situation but a posture of frigid silence and staring stiffly ahead. He was less than the dust beneath her carriage wheel. True, he wasn’t yet beneath her carriage wheel but he might land there in a moment if he didn’t stop trying to twist himself into a human interrogation point. Why didn’t her father come? Oh, the mortification of it! “Say, what’s yer name?” persisted this awful progeny of the lower classes. A numbing silence. Then, though embarrassed with his daring, Nathan announced: “That ain’t the way to drive a horse. Girls don’t know nothin’ bout animals, anyhow. I know how to drive a horse better’n that! I’ll climb up there and show yer!” Bernice-Theresa jumped. “You horrid boy!” she shrieked. “If you as much as touch one of these buggy wheels, I’ll have my father put you in jail where the rats will run _right over your face_!” It was the most hideous fate that Bernice-Theresa’s nine years could conceive. “Huh! I ain’t afraid o’ rats! We caught a big one in our trap last night. You stay here and I’ll fetch him! You could take him home and stuff him and trim up a room with him.”