Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/485

Rh give in. She hadn't had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master Harry. He sat behind his breakfast cup, a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers—at least, he knows that many such was found in the fireplace, all on horsel)ack. In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the bell—it was surprising how that there boy did carry on—and said in a sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighborhood?"

"Yes, sir," says Cobbs. "There's Love Lane."

"Get out with you, Cobbs!"—that was that there boy's expression—"you're joking."

"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers Junior."

"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs."

Boots leaves me to judge what a beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallered him up; he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as a well as he could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her—but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the wood, leastways meadow, and fell asleep.

Boots don't know—perhaps I do—but never mind, it don't signify either way—why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself, to see them two pretty babies a lying there