Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/412



a small wayside cottage in the outskirts of one of those picturesque villages which surround London, an old woman sat at the head of a small deal table, with a black teapot, a brown sugar-basin, a yellow milk jug, and a cracked tea-cup before her.

At the foot of the same table sat a young man, with a large knife in one hand, a huge loaf of bread in the other, and a mass of yellow butter in a blue plate in front of him.

The young man was James Slagg; the old woman was his mother. Jim had no brothers or sisters, and his father chanced to be absent at market, so he had the "old lady" all to himself.

"Well, well, Jim," said Mrs. Slagg, with a loving look at her son's flushed face, "you 've told me a heap o' wonderful tales about telegrumphs, an' tigers, an' electrocity an' what not. If you was as great a liar as you was used to be, Jim, I tell 'ee plain, lad, I wouldn't believe one word on it. But