"Oh, law!" Kenelm sighed; "you must think I'm made of 'em. Don't crawl
all over me; let me ponder for two halves of a shake."

Kirk subsided against his brother's arm, and a "think-line" now became
manifest on Kenelm's brow.

"See me a story"--Kirk's own queer phrase--had been the demand during
most of his eight years. It seemed as though he could never have enough
of this detail of a world visible to every one but himself. He must know
how everything looked--even the wind, which could certainly be _felt_,
and the rain, and the heat of the fire. From the descriptions he had
amassed through his unwearied questioning, he had pieced out for himself
a quaint little world of color and light,--how like or unlike the
actuality no one could possibly tell.

"Blue is a cool thing, like water, or ice clinking in your glass," he
would say, "and red's hot and sizzly, like the fire."

"Very true," his informants would agree; but for all that, they could
not be sure what his conception might be of the colors.

Things were so confusing! There, for instance, were tomatoes. They were
certainly very cool things, if you ate them sliced (when you were
allowed), yet you were told that they were as red as red could be! And
nothing could have been hotter than the blue tea-pot, when he picked it
up by its spout; but that, to be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the
_hot_ wasn't any color; oh, dear!

Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories for nothing. He plunged