whose piercing brilliancy took something wizard-like and mystical from the large spectacles through which they shone; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in which a physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewdness and some closeness, complete the picture:  Imagine this figure, grotesque, peregrinate; and to the eye of a peasant certainly diabolical, then perch it on the stile in the midst of those green English fields, and in sight of that primitive English village; there let it sit straddling, its long legs dangling down, a short German pipe emitting clouds from one corner of those sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the spectacles full upon the Parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield.  Lenny Fairfield looked exceedingly frightened.

“Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca.” said Mr. Dale, smiling, “you come in good time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;” and herewith the Parson explained the case, and put the question—­“Ought Lenny Fairfield to have the sixpence, or ought he not?”

“Cospetto!” said the Doctor.  “If the hen would but hold her tongue, nobody would know that she had laid an egg.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

“Granted,” said the Parson; “but what follows?  The saying is good, but I don’t see the application.”

“A thousand pardons!” replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an Italian; “but it seems to me, that if you had given the sixpence to the fanciullo—­that is, to this good little boy—­without telling him the story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into this awkward dilemma.”

“But, my dear sir,” whispered the Parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips to the Doctors ear, “I should then have lost the opportunity of inculcating a moral lesson—­you understand.”

Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth, and took a long whiff.  It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical—­a whiff peculiar to your philosophical smoker—­a whiff that implied the most absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the Parson’s moral lesson.

“Still you have not given us your decision,” said the Parson, after a pause.

The Doctor withdrew the pipe. “Cospetto!” said he.  “He who scrubs the head of an ass wastes his soap.”

“If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours,” said the Parson testily, “you would not make it any the wiser.”

“My good sir,” said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile, “I never presumed to say that there were more asses than in the story; but I thought I could not better explain my meaning, which is simply this—­you scrubbed the ass’s head, and therefore you must lose the soap.  Let the fanciullo have the sixpence; and a great sum it is, too, for a little boy, who may spend it all upon pocket-money!”