"How many kinds is there?"
Jim said, "Wal, there's the Methodist, the Baptist, the Graeco-Roman,
Episcopalian, and--the catch-as-catch-can."
"Give us the ketch-and-kin-ketch-as-you-kin," responded the spokesman.
"Mebbe we ought to begin with Sunday-school," suggested the blacksmith.
"That would sort of get us ready for the real she-bang."
"How do you do it?" inquired Lufkins, the teamster.
"Oh, it's just mostly catechism," Jim imparted, sagely.
"And what's catechism?" said Bone.
"Catechism," drawled the miner, "is where you ask a lot of questions
that only the children can answer."
"I know," responded the blacksmith, squatting down before the anvil.
"Little Skeezucks, who made you?"
The quaint little fellow looked at the brawny man timidly. How pale,
how wee he appeared in all that company, as he sat on the great lump of
iron, solemnly winking his big, brown eyes and clinging to his
make-shift of a doll!
"Aw, say, give him something easy," said Lufkins.
"That's what they used to bang at me," said the smith, defending his
position. "But I'll ask him the easiest one of the lot. Baby boy," he
said, in a gentle way of his own, "who is it makes everything?--who
makes all the lovely things in the world?"
Shyly the tiny man leaned back on the arm he felt he knew, and gravely,
to the utter astonishment of the big, rough men, in his sweet baby
utterance, he said:
"Bruv-ver--Jim.
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