And so, while the sermon drew on through two dreary hours, he forgot the preacher in noticing a bright green lizard which, having taken up its winter quarters behind the tin candlestick that hung just back of the preacher's head, had been deceived by the genial warmth coming from the great box-stove, and now ran out two or three feet from his shelter, looking down upon the red-nosed preacher in a most confidential and amusing manner.

Sometimes he would retreat behind the candlestick, which was not twelve inches from the preacher's head, and then rush out again.

At each reappearance Betsey Short would stuff her handkerchief into her mouth and shake in a most distressing way.

Shocky wondered what the lizard was winking at the preacher about.

And Miss Martha thought that it reminded her of a lizard that she see at the East, the time she was to Bosting, in a jar of alcohol in the Natural History Rooms.