_ Then he reached up and took his mother's face between his
two pink palms. "I hit Aunt Phebe, to-day, mamma. Vat was very naughty;
but I 'scused her, so it don't make any matter."
The fact was that Mac and his Aunt Phebe were not on intimate terms.
Never fond of children and none too fond of being disturbed in the
pursuit of her varying hobbies, Phebe had scant patience with the
vagaries of her small nephew. His ingratiating ways annoyed her; his
shrill babble distracted her; her sense of order revolted at the
omnipresent pails of sand which marked his pathway. Mac was revelling,
that summer, in the possession of unlimited supplies of sand, and, not
content with having it on the beach, he surreptitiously lugged it up to
Valhalla and constructed little amateur beaches wherever he could escape
from Phebe's searching eyes.
Phebe protested loudly over the beaches. They were in the way; they
rendered it unsafe to cross the floors, since they had a trick of
appearing in new and unsuspected localities. Moreover, they afforded a
source of constant interest to Melchisedek, who appeared to be secreting
an anatomical collection beneath them, and spent long hours on guard
above his latest addition to his hoard. It offended Phebe to be growled
at, just at the moment when her foot struck a heap of sand and bones
which should have had no place in a well-ordered home; it offended her
still more to listen to Mac's shrill unbraidings, when he found her
ruthlessly sweeping the whole deposit out of doors.
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