him his name?” asked Roger, all at once interested in the black baby in the canal.

“She did for a fact,” Nat replied. “Yes, Tavia called that coon Moses, and, if you don’t believe it she still has an active interest in the modern human frog; let me tell you she sent him a goat cart on his last birthday.”

“Oh, ho!” exclaimed Ned significantly. “So that was the goat cart you bought down at Tim’s, eh? Now, I call that real romantic! Mother, you must include Mosey when next you invite folks from Dalton.”

“Oh, yes, Aunty, please do,” begged Roger, clapping his hands. “I just love little colored boys. They talk so funny and warble their eyes so.”

“‘Warble,’” repeated Nat. “Why not ‘scramble’? Scrambled eyes would look real pretty, I think.”

“Well,” retorted Roger, “I watched a coon boy look that way one day and the—yolk of his eye stuck away up behind the—the cover. Yes it did—really,” for the others were laughing at him. “And I told him it was a good thing that the looker didn’t rub off.”

Everyone agreed with Roger that it was a very good thing that “lookers” didn’t rub off, and so the small talk drifted from “Mose” to more substantial topics.

Directly after dinner Dorothy went to the library to sing and play for the major. She had, of course, improved considerably in her music, and when the usual favorites were given, including some war songs, besides “Two Little Boys in Blue” for Roger’s special benefit, the boys kept her busy the remainder of the evening playing college songs, one after the other, for, as fast as they discovered they did not know one they would “make a try” at the next.

“Now they miss Tavia,” whispered Mrs. White in an aside to the major. “She is a genius at funny songs. What she doesn’t know she has a faculty for guessing at with splendid results.”

“Yes indeed. It’s a pity she didn’t come along with Dorothy. They have always been inseparable, and I rather miss the little imp myself tonight,” admitted the major.

But when the singers came to the old classics, “Seeing Nellie Home” Ned cut “Nellie” out and substituted Tavia’s name whereat Nat insisted that he could not stand any more of the “obsequies,” and so broke up the performance with a heart-rending and ear-splitting discordant yell.

“Well, you’ll feel better 

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