"Could you bring me a little crab off the beach? If you would catch one for me, and teach it to shake hands without nipping and biting, it would make me quite happy, for I have not had any toys or playthings in a long time. It would be a good plan to hire a little crab to teach the baby to crawl, if he can't walk yet. Bless him! But I must not write on him any more; he is so soft, and I have nothing but steel pens.
"Now good-by; give my love to everybody, and my compliments to all the rest, and believe me, up hill and down dale,
"Your affectionate neighbor, "JOSIAH OLDBIRD."
Then I put my letter in a flag envelope, sealed it up tight, and wrote on it, "To my dear Neighbor Nelly," and had the maid take it to her.
Presently I could see two little figures flitting about in one of the upper chambers, and soon after all four of us, Nelly, Jimmy, I, and Gipsey, were in the street. Gipsey was a "toy terrier" that ought to have belonged to "Commodore Nutt," the dwarf at "Barnum's," and ran along on three legs most of the time, with the fourth, and his cork-screw tail elevated in the air for joy at being allowed to join the party; while the children were all hop, skip, and jump, and kept tight hold of a hand of mine apiece, as though they were afraid of flying away if they let go. Meanwhile, I walked quietly along, with my market basket on my arm, a sober old bachelor. I expect the people who passed us in the street thought me a rather incongruous addition to such a frisky party; but then, you know, children _must_ caper about. Bless your heart! it would never do in the world to see children mincing solemnly along, like little old men and women; it would be as absurd as to have my Neighbor Nelly wearing her great-grandmother's coal-scuttle bonnet! The last idea struck me as so odd, that I drew a little picture of Neighbor Nelly in this guise when I got home, and here it is. How do you like it?
We thought we would go to market first. So we walked slowly down Fourth Avenue, and crossed over to the market where the Seventh Regiment armory is, opposite the Cooper Institute.
"My cousin is a Seventh Regimenter!" said Jimmy as we climbed up the iron steps; "he often let us look on at his company drills last winter, and afterward Nelly and I drilled in our yard. The big boy who comes to see the old ladies next door, looked over the fence and laughed at us, but we didn't care; and we mean to fight for our country like everything when we are bigger; that is, I mean to, and Nelly would like to, but she's only a girl, you know."