The cooing tone pleased the little creature, and he sang again even more sweetly than before.

“Let me show you another of his tricks.  You see this little gun?  Well, when he fires it off that will be the end of poor Job!”

The gun was about two inches long and as large around as a lead pencil.  Inside was a tiny spring; and when Job’s claw touched the spring the gun went off with a loud report.  Job fell over at once as if shot and lay perfectly still and stiff on the rug.  Lucy screamed out:—–­

“Oh, I’m so sorry he is dead!”

But next moment he roused himself and sat up and shook his feathers as if he relished the joke.

The children had a delightful half hour with the captain’s widow and her pets; only Lucy could not be satisfied because Bab was away.

“Too bad you went off riding yesterday,” said she as they sat next morning playing with their dolls.  “You never saw that blind canary that shoots himself, and comes to life and rings a bell.”

“But can’t I see him sometime, Auntie Lucy?”

“You can, oh, yes, and I’ll go with you.  But, Bab, you ought to have heard our talk about the play!  Kyzie is going to be as much as a hundred years old, and I guess Uncle James will be a hundred and fifty.  And they’ve got a pair of old glasses with sand inside—­the same kind that Adam and Eve used to have.”

“Why-ee!  Did Adam and Eve wear glasses?  ’Tisn’t in their pictures; I never saw ’em with glasses on!”

“No, no, I don’t mean glasses wear!  I said glasses with sand inside; that’s what Uncle James has got.  Runs out every hour.  Sits on the table.”

“Oh, I know what you mean, auntie!  You mean an hour-glass! Grandpa Hale has one and I’ve seen lots of ’em in France.”

Lucy felt humbled.  Though pretending to be Bab’s aunt, she often found that her little niece knew more than she knew herself!

“Seems queer about Adam and Eve,” said she, hastening to change the subject; “who do you s’pose took care of ’em when they were little babies?”

“Why, Auntie Lucy, there wasn’t ever any babiness about Adam and Eve!  Don’t you remember, they stayed just exactly as they were made!”

“Yes, so they did.  I forgot.”

Lucy had made another mistake.  This was not like a “truly auntie”; still it did not matter so very much, for Bab never laughed at her and they loved each other “dearilee.”

“You know a great many things, don’t you, Bab?  And I keep forgetting ’em.”

“Oh, I know all about the world and the garden of Eden; that’s easy enough,” replied the wise niece.

And then they went back to their dolls.

Half an hour later Kyzie Dunlee was standing in the schoolhouse door with a group of children about her when Nate Pollard appeared.  As he looked at her he remembered “Jimmy’s play,” and the parts they were both to take in it; and the thought of little Kyzie as his poor old grandmother seemed so funny to Nate that he began to laugh and called out, “Good morning, grandmother!”