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Three little mice ran up the stairs
To hear Biddy Campbell say her prayers;
And when they heard her say Amen,
The three little mice ran down again.

And, gee but you were the punk speller! Remember how there was always a spelling match Friday afternoons? I’ll never forget the day you fell down on ‘nausea.’ You’d lasted pretty well that day, for you; everybody’d gone down but you and Myrtie Swett and me and one or two more. But when Biddy Campbell put that word up to you, you looked it, if you couldn’t spell it!”

“Hum,” said I, “I wouldn’t rub it in, if I were you. I seem to recall a public day when old Gilman Temple, the committee man, asked you what was the largest bird that flies, and you said, ‘The Kangaroo.'”

Old Hundred grinned. “That’s the day the new boy laughed,” said he. “Remember the new boy? I mean the one that wore the derby which we used to push down over his eyes? Sometimes in the yard one of us would squat behind him, and then somebody else would push him over backward. We made him walk Spanish, too. But after that public day he and I went way down to the horse-sheds behind the meeting-house in the village, and had it out. I wonder why we always fought in the holy horse-sheds? The ones behind the town hall were never used for that purpose.”

This was true, but I couldn’t explain it. “We couldn’t always wait to get to the horse-sheds, as I remember it,” said I. “Sometimes we couldn’t wait to get out of sight of school.”

I began hunting the neighborhood for the hide-and-seek spots. The barn and the carriage-shed across the road were still there, with cracks yawning between the mouse-gray boards. The shed was also ideal for “Anthony over.” And in the pasture behind the school stood the great boulder, by the sassafras tree. “I’ll bet you can’t count out,” said I.

“Pooh!” said Old Hundred. He raised his finger, pointed it at an imaginary line of boys and girls, and chanted–

“Acker, backer, soda cracker,
Acker, backer, boo!
If yer father chews terbacker,
Out goes you.

And now you’re it,” he finished pointing at me.

I was not to be outdone. “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty,–” I began to mumble. Then, “One thousand!” I shouted.

“Bushel o’ wheat and a bushel o’ rye,
All ‘t ‘aint hid, holler knee high!”

I looked for a stick, stood it on end, and let it fall. It fell toward the boulder. “You’re up in the sassafras tree,” I said.

“No,” said Old Hundred, “that’s Benny.”

Then we looked at each other and laughed.

“You poor old idiot,” said Old Hundred.

“You doddering imbecile,” said I, “come on up to Sandy.”

Somehow, it wasn’t far to Sandy. It used to be miles. We passed by Myrtie Swett’s house on the way. It stood back from the turnpike just as ever, with its ample doorway, its great shadowing elms, its air of haughty well-being. Myrtie, besides a prize speller, was something of a social queen. She was very beautiful and she affected ennui.

“Oh, dear, bread and beer,
If I was home I shouldn’t be here!”

she used to say at parties, with a tired air that was the secret envy of the other little girls, who were unable to conceal their pleasure at being “here.” However, Myrtie never went home, we noticed. Rather did she take a leading part in every game of Drop-the-handkerchief, Post Office, or Copenhagen–tinglingly thrilling games, with unknown possibilities of a sentimental nature.

“If I thought she still lived in the old place, I’d go up and tell her I had a letter for her,” said Old Hundred.

“She’d probably give you a stamp,” I replied.

“Not unless she’s changed!” he grinned.

But we saw no signs of Myrtie. Several children played in the yard. There was the face of a strange woman at the window, a very plain woman, who looked old, as she peered keenly at the two urban passers.