you s’pose I’m going to let him ’buse my little sister,—nipping up her hands like a pair o’ tongs with a pair o’ clams?”

“Oh! was that it?”

Mrs. Pitcher couldn’t help hugging Pollio; for he didn’t seem to mind his own sufferings when he thought of his precious Posy.

“Well, my son, if Jimmy pinched her, that was wrong. I like to see you so ready to protect your sister; but you needn’t fly at anybody like a little savage. I can’t have my darling boy fight!”

Pollio buried his aching nose in his mother’s bosom. He didn’t want to fight again that day, you may be sure.

It was a whole week before he could go to school again; for his nose was hideous. It was red, blue, green, and yellow; and Nunky said nobody could get an education who looked like that.

Posy would not go without her brother, and mourned very much because people laughed at him.

“Don’t cry about me,” said Pollio: “I’m only a boy! If ’twas a girl, ’twould be awful!”

CHAPTER III.
“THE FINNY-CASTICS.”

Pollio didn’t learn much during his first term at school, except mischief. He learned to whoop like a wild Indian, and stand on his head like the clown at a circus. Eliza said that whoop was “enough to split her ears in two,” and he never entered the house without it.

But it was midsummer now, and vacation had begun. Fourth of July was coming; and Judge Pitcher, before going away to attend court, had bought Teddy and Pollio a good supply of pin-wheels and fire-crackers. Posy did not fancy such noisy playthings, and he had given her some money to buy “Hop-clover” a dress.

It would not be the Fourth till to-morrow; but Pollio had fired off nearly all his crackers, and was now frightening Posy by climbing the ridge-pole of the barn. While she was running back and forth, clasping her hands, and begging him to come down, their kind old Quaker friend, Mr. Littlefield, drove up to the gate.

“Hurry, hurry!” cried Posy: “the Earthquake’s coming.”

The Quaker laughed to hear himself called an earthquake: though he did shake the floor a little when he walked; for he was a fleshy man,—as large as Judge Pitcher.

“How does thee do, Josephine?” said he, patting her curls as he entered the yard. “Where’s thy little brother?”

Then, spying him on the roof of the barn, he exclaimed, “Napoleon, Napoleon, come down here! Thee shouldn’t play the monkey like that!”

“Napoleon” obeyed quickly.

“Now tell me what makes thee climb such high places? Thee’ll break thy neck yet.”

“Oh! I told Posy I was going to; and you wouldn’t have me tell her a lie, would you?” replied Pollio with a very serious face.

The Quaker would not allow himself to smile at this. “Is thy mother willing to have thee do so?”

Pollio knew she was not; and he hung his head, and began to beat the dirt in the road with a stick. He was very fond of Mr. Littlefield, and did not like to have the good man know he ever did wrong.

“Stop, my son! Is it possible thee kills snakes?”

For Pollio was crushing a little snake with his stick.

“No, sir: ’twas dead in the first place, and I just killed it a little more.”

The Quaker smiled, and went into the house with the children. He staid to tea; and at the table he observed once or twice that Pollio did not obey his mother the very moment she spoke, and he feared his little pet was growing naughty. “Napoleon,” said he, as the little boy came skipping out after supper to see him mount his horse. (He would never call him Pollio, though he disliked his real name, for “Napoleon Bonaparte was a fighting-man.”) “Napoleon!”

“Sir?” said Pollio.

“Thee is a great favorite of mine, Napoleon; but I have a word to say against thy conduct to-day.”

Pollio cast down his eyes. Mr. Littlefield was an old-fashioned man, who did not use very good grammar; but everybody loved him dearly, and Pollio would rather have been chidden by almost any one else.

“Thee has one of the best mothers that ever lived, my boy. I want thee always to mind thy mother.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And remember this: A child that won’t mind its mother won’t mind its God!”

“Click, clack,” went the horse’s hoofs; and Pollio stood on the fence till horse and rider were far out of sight. Still these words rang in his ears:—

“A child that won’t mind its mother won’t mind its God.”

Next morning he and Teddy were wakened by the firing of guns; and both sprang out of bed with a bound, and Pollio with a “whoop.” He had a new “pair o’ clo’es,” which he was not to wear till next Sunday; but I grieve to say, that, thinking he could not do too much for his country, he put them on, and ran down stairs after Teddy.

Posy, who slept in the next room with Edith, wished also to do something for her country, but fell asleep, and forgot it.

The two boys rushed out of doors as if there were no time to be lost; but it was so very early that nobody was to be seen but Beppo, and Muff the gray cat, whose tail had a yellow tip, as if it had been scorched. The village-boys, who had been firing guns and ringing bells, had gone to bed to make up their sleep; and there was no sound now except from time to time the crowing of a cock, or the braying of Judge Pitcher’s donkey, which Pollio called by mistake “the Yankee.”

There were “fairies’ tablecloths” on the grass,—I mean spiders’ webs,—covered with dew: the flowers hung their heads, and the trees hardly stirred. The world did not look natural to the two little boys at this early hour.

“Let’s go in the barn and take a nap,” yawned Teddy, not half as wide awake as his brother.

“How now, boys? what makes you so sober?” called out somebody from the piazza. “Come up here and see what I’ve got for you.”

The words were very refreshing; but at the same time Nunky let fly three beautiful red, white, and blue balloons, the largest and gayest ever seen.

Teddy was as wide awake now as Pollio, and cut as many capers of delight.

“So you like them, do you?” laughed Nunky. “They are for you and Posy, from your ‘thee-and-thou friend.’”

“Oh! he’s the goodest man that ever lived, ’cept you!” shouted Pollio.

“Can’t you say thank you?”

“Fank you,” said Pollio with a fearful pull at his front-hair; and over he went in a somerset.

The strings were long, and the balloons flew up like birds into the morning sky.

“Oh, if they had only made such things when I was a boy! It’s sad to think how much I’ve lost!” said Nunky with a make-believe sigh.

Pollio was very sorry for his uncle. It must be hard to grow up and not care for balloons! Nunky would never, never, be a boy again: his good times were over.

“Poor Nunky! He has got to stay old,” thought Pollio as the young man walked into the house with a bounding step.

He was very far from old, and, as for good times, felt much happier than either of his little nephews, if they had only known it. Teddy had gone in swimming the day before without leave, and naughty