hated to hear him swear that way, for, sez I, ’Young man, you may get there yet, and you may be glad to have Stanshy’s help.’  Then he took a barrel of fish he was fillin’, and he was so mad he rolled the whole mess into the water, sayin’ he would have nothin’ to do with any thing that had touched Aunt Stanshy’s barn.  I asked him why he didn’t then throw himself over!  That touched him up, and he grabbed his knives and pitched them into the dock.  It was a queer sight to see them fish in that barrel floatin’ away.  But then the rum was in him and maddened him.  When he had left, it was Aunt Stanshy’s turn to do suthin’.  I heard it all, for I was in the yard doin’ a few chores for Stanshy.  Fust, there was a slam in the barn chamber.  I jest slipped up them stairs and peeked over the edge of the floor.  Stanshy had pulled the shutter in with a vengeance.  Then she hooked it and drove the nails over the hook as tight as bricks.  O she is a woman of ‘mazin’ vigor, Stanshy is, when she gets agoin’.  She came down stairs and she fastened up this door, and then I seed her fumblin’ in her pocket, and, pullin’ out a piece of chalk, she began to write.  When Stanshy had finished, of course, I was at my chores agin very busily engaged.  Well, since that day, there has been silence between Stanshy and Tim like that round the old tombstones in the church-yard.  I hope some day it will be different.”

With this benevolent wish, Simes closed.

“A bad scrape,” remarked Charlie.

“Yes, people ought not to drink so much,” said the abstemious and ascetic Simes.  “They ought to stop this side of a drop too much.”

“They ought to stop this side of any drop at all,” stoutly affirmed the young member of Mr. Walton’s temperance society.

“Pre—­pre—­haps so,” replied Simes.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ENTERTAINMENT.

Aunt Stanshy, as she looked down upon the sitting-room table, saw Charlie’s curly head bending over pen, ink, and card-board.  He had cut the card-board into strips three inches long and two inches wide.

“What have you there?”

Charlie was too much occupied to notice this remark.

“What are you doing?”

“Making tickets.”

“Tickets?”

“Yes, will you buy one?”

“I want to see first what I am going to buy.”

“You may.”

Aunt Stanshy then read these lines on a slip of card-board: 

-------------------------------------------
|     Ticket to the Up-the-Ladder Boys’     |
|             ENTERTAINMENT.                |
|    Admission, 2 nails.  Seat, 10 nails.    |
| Elders’ admission, 1 cent.  Seat, 2 cents. |
-------------------------------------------

“O, that is it I Could I go in for nails, or a cent?”

“For a cent.”

“Then I’m an ‘elder.’”

“Yes, aunty.”

“Well, I’ll engage a seat.”