"Just allow me to touch it," said Dr. Pepjohn, inserting his fat
finger and thumb into my mouth. "I won't hurt you, my little man," he
added, with the affable mendaciousness of his craft. Fortunately for
me it was rather loose, and a couple of hard wrenches from the
doctor's expert fingers brought it out.
"You think me very cruel, now, don't you, my little man?" said the
jocose gentleman, as we were taking leave.
"I don't think you're cruel," I answered, candidly; "but I think you
tell fibs, for it _did_ hurt."
The doctor laughed long and loudly, and said I was quite an original,
which puzzled me extremely. Then he gave me sixpence, with which I was
much pleased, and we parted good friends.
My father was with us on the following Sunday, and he did not go to
the church Aunt Maria went to. I went to the one to which he went.
This church was very well built and appropriately decorated. The music
was good, the responses of the congregation hearty, and the service
altogether was much better adapted to awaken and sustain the interest
of a child than those I had hitherto been to in London.
"You know we _couldn't_ play houses in the church where Papa goes," I
told Polly on my return, and I was very anxious that she should go
with us to the evening service.
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