"Can this be possible, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe. "What can the boy mean?"

     "I'll tell you, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "My opinion is, it's a sedan-chair. She's flighty, you know,--very flighty,--quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair."

     "Did you ever see her in it, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe.

     "How could I," he returned, forced to the admission, "when I never see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!"

     "Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?"

     "Why, don't you know," said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, "that when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don't say you don't know that, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did you play at, boy?"

     "We played with flags," I said. (I beg to observe that I think of myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)

     "Flags!" echoed my sister.