MARTIN RATTLER. 141

Grumbit hard at the one thousand nine hundred and
ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr.
Arthur Jollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the
old lady’s bed-curtain chintz and high-crowned cap,
with the white kitten in his arms and his spectacles
on his chin, watching the process with intense interest,
and cautioning her not to forget the “hitch” by any
means; whereupon the kitten would fly up in his
face, and Mr. Jollyboy would dash through the
window with a loud howl, and Mrs. Grumbit’s face
would turn blue, and, uncoiling an enormous tail, she
would bound shrieking after him in among the trees
and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this
point, and found the marmoset, gazing in his face
with an expression of sorrowful solemnity, and the
old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as
he steered his light craft down the broad stream of
the Tocantins.

The trader could speak little more English than
sufficed to enable him to say “ yes” and “no;” Barney
could speak about as much Portuguese as enabled
him to say “no” and “yes;” while Martin, by means
of a slight smattering of that language, which he had
picked up by ear during the last few months, mixed
now and then with a word or two of Latin, and

helped out by a clever use of the language of signs,