" He smiled as he spoke.
"Is she as big as me?"
Lloyd Pryor put down his paper and twitched his glasses off. "About
twice as big I should think," he said kindly.
"Twice as big! And twice as old?"
"How old are you?"
"I'm seven, going on eight."
"Well, then, let's see. Alice is--she is twice and five years more as
old. What do you make of that?"
The child began to count on his fingers, and, after looking at him a
minute or two with some amusement, Mr. Pryor returned to his paper.
After a while the boy said, suddenly, "In the flood the ducks couldn't
be drowned, could they?"
But Lloyd Pryor had become interested in what he was reading. "You
talk too much, young man," he said coldly, and there was no further
conversation. The old stage jogged along in the uncertain sunshine;
sometimes Mr. Pryor smoked, once he took a nap. While he slept the
little boy looked at him furtively, but by and by he turned to the
window, absorbed in his own affairs.
As the stage pulled into Old Chester, Mr. Pryor roused himself. "Well,
my boy, here we are," he said.
The child quivered and his hands tightened on his bundle, but he said
nothing. When they drew up at the tavern, there was Danny and Goliath
and Dr. Lavendar.
"Mary gave me some gingerbread for him," Dr. Lavendar was saying to
Van Horn. "I've got it tied up in my handkerchief. Why," he
interrupted himself, screwing up his eyes and peering into the dusk of
the old coach--"why, I believe here's Mrs.
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