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They were full of nicks as well as wood-knots, and the appearance of some of the former gave Code an idea. He went carefully over the boards, sticking his thumb-nail into them and lifting or pressing down as the shape of the nick warranted. For they resembled very much the depressions cut in sliding covers on starch-boxes whereby such covers can be pushed in their grooves.

Pete's shock of hair stood up as usual like a scrubbing-brush; he wore no hat, and his dull eyes looked about from one to another eager face. Ben had strolled back of a tall pile of starch-boxes. "Is it true an areoplane come down in Mr. Carder's field yisterday?" The question volleyed at the dwarf from a dozen directions.

The musician sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be ready when the music should resume. "What is it?" they asked. "Who is it?"

Moored to the wharf was a coal-barge, with a tiny dwelling-cabin at whose windows white curtains fluttered. Beside the cabin was a garden tended by the bargeman's comely white-browed wife; a dozen daisies and geraniums in two starch-boxes.