Arthur Stringer

“ He waited impatiently until everything had grown quiet and then gave the accustomed signal,—six knocks on the wall with his shoe,—and leaned out the window to tell Mary Edith.
"It was a lie," whispered Georgie, "and Uncle Charley says that the Revolution was won in England, by what he called the middle classes in between, you know."
"There!" said Mary Edith, with conviction. "I always knew that Freckles was telling stories. Oh, I say, Georgie, are n't you glad?"
Georgie made the sound that usually accompanies the mastication of a chocolate cream. Mary Edith understood. ”

“ England had her hands and feet tied, for she was fighting with Napoleon, and that's just the same as if Mary Edith tried to lick Uncle Charley and you at the same time, and she could just send out a few men, just the tiniest few men you can think of. ”

“ He also knew that his father was a Great Man, and did much toward keeping the Empire intact.
So Georgie could not contain himself when his father had promised to let him stay with his Uncle Charley in New York while the Great Man himself mysteriously went on to Washington, to find out things about the seals. Georgie's father had even gone further than this, and bought him an air-gun, to shoot Wild Indians. Georgie could not hear America mentioned without dreaming of Wild Indians. ”

“ Georgie saved the life of Mary Edith's doll when it had a most terrible sawdust hemorrhage, and Mary Edith learned how to load the air-gun, and the days slipped away, and that little back yard would have been a second Eden were it not for the presence of Freckles. Freckles was older and bigger than the two aliens, and they knew he could say things better than they could, and he was always telling how the United States licked England in the Revolution, and licked her again in the War of 1812, and could lick her now if she was n't afraid to fight! ”

“ But many were the happy afternoons, following that first meeting, the two aliens spent together, and when night came it was even nicer, for they would lock their bedroom doors and give the mystic signal, and then lean out of their windows and talk to each other of Home and how funny it was to call trams street cars, and 'buses stages, and say blocks for squares. ”

“ They also decided that a country where one could n't buy brandy-balls was a dreadfully poor place to live, and that stone walls were much nicer than old board fences, especially board fences with so many nails in them. ”