In October a little boy came from New York with his father to visit Major Irwin. It was Gilly’s cousin, Dick Somers; and Dick was destined to get Jimmy into trouble.

He was a boastful boy. He told wonderful stories about the city of New York, where the houses went as high as Jack’s beanstalk, and the people had so much money that they almost threw it away.

Dick had left a dog at home which seemed to him now as large as a small burro. Yes, he was sure of it. A dog much brighter than Punch Dunlee, as well as vastly handsomer.

Dick had a beautiful sister; there was no one like her in California. She had been married six weeks before this in church; and “I tell you what, they spread carpets all over the streets for Maggie to walk on; yes, they did!”

Gilbert only laughed at these remarkable tales; but they annoyed Jamie, because they made him feel so very inferior.

He tried in his turn to remember and relate strange things that had happened to him or that he had seen; but he did not succeed very well. Dick despised rattlesnakes, horned toads, gophers, and road-runners. He wouldn’t believe there are quicksands in California, where you can “slump down, down, clear out of sight.”

“Pooh! you needn’t tell me!”

It was very discouraging to talk to Dick; still Jimmy was always ready to talk.

One Saturday morning, Dick and Gilbert came over to the Dunlees’ to play with Jimmy, who was glad to see them. It was very still in and about the house that morning. Mr. Sanford had been gone to the city of Washington for many weeks, and it always seemed odd without Mr. Sanford. To-day papa was visiting a sick man just out of town; Mrs. Porter, over the way, had borrowed the baby; Kyzie and Edith were having a botany lesson with Aunt Vi somewhere in a canyon; and Lucy had gone to Lincoln Heights to spend the day.

“What a merry time the little boys seem to be having in the stable!” remarked Mrs. Dunlee to Vendla, as they heard the sound of childish laughter floating in on the air.

She had asked Jimmy to get some hens’ eggs; for she and Vendla were to make some cake for tea by a new recipe. There was no haste about the eggs, however. Vendla stood by the pantry window rolling out pie-crust with a glass rolling-pin, and would not be ready to begin upon the cake till her four pies had gone into the oven.

Ah, that cake which had not been baked yet, that cake by the new rule! If Mrs. Dunlee and Vendla had only known what strange thing would happen to it that afternoon they certainly would not have made it at all! But they did not know; and Mrs. Dunlee very soon took down a large baking-pan and buttered it, saying to herself all the while that she hoped the baby was behaving well at Mrs. Porter’s. She missed him, and missed her three girls, and thought what a happy mother she was with five such dear children. Yet, after all, she was not sorry to have them out of the house for once on a Saturday morning.

“There’s Jimmy laughing again, above the other boys. He’s a noisy child; I wonder if Baby Eddy will be as fond of fun as Jimmy? Well, at any rate, I hope they’ll both grow up to be good.

Now it was time for the cake.

“Jimmy, Jimmy!” called Mrs. Dunlee from the window. “You may bring the eggs now.”

All this while the little boys in the stable had been chatting, and had hardly thought of the eggs.

“Billy Dow thrashed me last night,” said Gilbert, shaking his fist at the rafters. “But I tell you I paid him off.”

“Paid him off, that big fellow?” said Jimmy.

“Of course! Did you s’pose Gilly was going to forgive him?” cried the little cousin from New York contemptuously. “Would you forgive a boy that thrashed you, Jimmy Dunlee?”

“Ye-es,—if I couldn’t catch him! If he was ever so much larger’n me!” was Jimmy’s candid reply.

Gilly laughed. “I don’t forgive ’em ’cause they’re big! If I didn’t dare hit Billy, I could call him awful names, and run out my tongue at him; couldn’t I? Guess he won’t try to thrash me again!”

“What did you call him?” asked Jimmy, much interested.

“‘Billee! Billee!’ says I, as loud as I could screech; ‘Billee, you’re an old monkey-wrench!’ says I.”

“Why!” exclaimed Jimmy, struck by Gilly’s boldness. “Why-ee! I’ve had some o’ those big boys call me a monkey; that’s bad enough!”

“Yes; but I said monkey-wrench,” said Gilly proudly.

“I was the one that told him the word!” cried Dick, eager to share in the praise; “it’s a word they have in New York.”

Not one of the three little boys thought of asking, “What is a monkey-wrench?” It sounded like something too bad to be talked about.

“What’s that queer noise?” asked Dick.

It was John laughing all by himself in the stall at what the boys were saying. But when Jimmy peeped through the slats of the stall at the pretty chocolate-and-white cow, John stood there looking as solemn as an owl.

“We’ll get our eggs first, and then go in and play with Jessie,” said Jimmy, thinking this a great pleasure. But Dick, who had hardly ever seen a cow, was secretly afraid of Jessie’s “hooks.”

“Let’s see which’ll get the most eggs,” said he, beginning to climb the ladder to the mow.

And now began a hand-and-knee exploring-expedition after eggs.

“Needn’t dig so deep,” said Jimmy, as Dick thrust both arms up to the elbows in the straw.

“Well, but I’ve found an egg, Jimmy Dunlee, and you haven’t! Just as yellow! Do you keep yellow hens?”

The laugh was now against Dick, who “didn’t know everything,” so Gilly said, “even if he did come from New York.”

“I’ve found two eggs,” said Gilly, “so, now, what you think?”

“And I’ve found four,” cried Jimmy, trying to pitch his voice on a subdued key. Too much triumph might be impolite to his guests.

“Why, here are two more, makes four. I found ’em myself,” said Gilbert grandly. “What does your mamma do with so many eggs?”

“She’s going to put these in a cake.”

“I like mince-pies better’n cake,” returned Gilbert.

“I don’t eat ’em,” responded the boy from New York disdainfully, “and my mamma’s fankful I don’t!”

“What do you eat?” asked Jimmy.

Dick considered a moment.

“Apple-pie and cream candy and wedding-cake. Sometimes I eat bread and butter—if there’s jelly on it.”

“Oh!” said Jimmy with great respect, mingled perhaps with a little envy.

Did this come of living “back East” in New York? What more delightful than to be Dick Somers, and live where you have wedding-cake every day of your life!

“But,” ventured Jimmy with rising courage, “maybe this will be wedding-cake that mamma’s going to make. She didn’t say.”

The other boys laughed, and Dick said,—

“Pooh! I know better’n that! Say, none of your sisters ever went and got married, did they, Jim?”

Went and got married! His little sisters! Jimmy pondered on this foolish question. Dick meant it as an insult to his mamma’s cooking, no doubt, though he could not see how. Making sport of her cake, indeed, and before it was baked!

Jimmy had tried to be polite to the boys as his guests; but boys who go visiting ought to be polite too.

“Dick Somers!” cried Jimmy in a towering rage, “you stop that! I don’t care if you did come from New York, you don’t know any more about my mamma’s cake than you do about—about horned toads, so there!”

It was just here that the pleasant voice called from the pantry window,—

“Jimmy, Jimmy, you may bring the eggs now.”

It was well that something should cut short Jimmy’s angry speech. It was not safe to discuss horned toads above all things with Dick. Jimmy always grew furious to hear Dick talk so wisely about them, when, as Gilly said, “he wouldn’t know one from a caterpillar;” whereas Jimmy had raised a whole family of the queer little creatures, and knew them like A B C.