I wanted to act, I must act all the characters, and be my own audience.  I remember that I got a lot of sticks at last, and cut heads and faces to all of them, and carved names on their sides, and called them my brothers and sisters.  If you want to know what I thought a nice number for a fellow to have, I can only say that I remember carving twenty-five.  I used to stick them in the ground and talk to them.  I have been only, and lonely, and alone, all my life, and have never felt the nuisance you speak of.”

This was a funny account; but the speaker looked so far from funny that one of the sisters, who was very tender-hearted, crept up to him, and said, gently—­

“Richard is only joking; he doesn’t really want to get rid of us.  The other day the curate said he wished he had a sister, and Richard offered to sell us all for ninepence; but he is only in fun.  Only it is rather slow just now, and the boys get rather cross; at least, we all of us do.”

“It’s a dreadful state of things,” said the friend, smiling through his black beard and moustachios.  “What is to be done?”

“I know what would be very nice,” insinuated the young lady.

“What?”

“If you wouldn’t mind telling us a very short story till supper-time.  The boys like stories.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Benjamin.  “As if the girls didn’t!”

But the friend proclaimed order, and seated himself with the girl in question on his knee.  “Well, what sort of a story is it to be?”

“Any sort,” said Richard; “only not too true, if you please.  I don’t like stories like tracts.  There was an usher at a school I was at, and he used to read tracts about good boys and bad boys to the fellows on Sunday afternoon.  He always took out the real names, and put in the names of the fellows instead.  Those who had done well in the week he put in as good ones, and those who hadn’t as the bad.  He didn’t like me, and I was always put in as a bad boy, and I came to so many untimely ends I got sick of it.  I was hanged twice, and transported once for sheep-stealing; I committed suicide one week, and broke into the bank the next; I ruined three families, became a hopeless drunkard, and broke the hearts of my twelve distinct parents.  I used to beg him to let me be reformed next week; but he said he never would till I did my Caesar better.  So, if you please, we’ll have a story that can’t be true.”

“Very well,” said the friend, laughing; “but if it isn’t true, may I put you in?  All the best writers, you know, draw their characters from their friends now-a-days.  May I put you in?”

“Oh, certainly!” said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire, putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly favoured.

The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more modest but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of thought, Paterfamilias’s friend commenced the story of