It would not be the Fourth till to-morrow; but Pollio had fired off nearly all his crackers, and was now frightening Posy by climbing the ridge-pole of the barn. While she was running back and forth, clasping her hands, and begging him to come down, their kind old Quaker friend, Mr. Littlefield, drove up to the gate.
“Hurry, hurry!” cried Posy: “the _Earthquake’s_ coming.”
The Quaker laughed to hear himself called an _earthquake_: though he did shake the floor a little when he walked; for he was a fleshy man,—as large as Judge Pitcher.
“How does thee do, Josephine?” said he, patting her curls as he entered the yard. “Where’s thy little brother?”
Then, spying him on the roof of the barn, he exclaimed, “Napoleon, Napoleon, come down here! Thee shouldn’t play the monkey like that!”
“Now tell me what makes thee climb such high places? Thee’ll break thy neck yet.”
“Oh! I told Posy I was going to; and you wouldn’t have me tell her a lie, would you?” replied Pollio with a very serious face.
The Quaker would not allow himself to smile at this. “Is thy mother willing to have thee do so?”
Pollio knew she was not; and he hung his head, and began to beat the dirt in the road with a stick. He was very fond of Mr. Littlefield, and did not like to have the good man know he ever did wrong.
“Stop, my son! Is it possible thee kills snakes?”
For Pollio was crushing a little snake with his stick.
“No, sir: ’twas dead in the first place, and I just killed it a little more.”
The Quaker smiled, and went into the house with the children. He staid to tea; and at the table he observed once or twice that Pollio did not obey his mother the very moment she spoke, and he feared his little pet was growing naughty. “Napoleon,” said he, as the little boy came skipping out after supper to see him mount his horse. (He would never call him Pollio, though he disliked his real name, for “Napoleon Bonaparte was a fighting-man.”) “Napoleon!”
“Thee is a great favorite of mine, Napoleon; but I have a word to say against thy conduct to-day.”
Pollio cast down his eyes. Mr. Littlefield was an old-fashioned man, who did not use very good grammar; but everybody loved him dearly, and Pollio would rather have been chidden by almost any one else.