Once or twice he suggested that, if it was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a little.

Uncle Salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion, reminding him that he was not a preacher and mustn't think of such things.

"We'd hev him rememberin' Johns-town next," Salters explained, "an' what would happen then ?" so they compromised on his reading aloud from a book called "Josephus." It was an old leather-bound volume, smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the Bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from cover to cover.

Otherwise Penn was a silent little body.

He would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at the stories.