Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/574

144 christening with her crutch-stick, and give the child a bad gift. Was there anything of that sort? Answer, William."

I said that ma had said afterward (and so she had), that Great-uncle Chopper's gift was a shabby one; but she hadn't said a bad one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and below his income.

"It must be the grown-up people who have changed all this," said Alice. "We couldn't have changed it, if we had been so inclined, and we never should have been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after all, and won't act up to it, because the grown-up people have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would make us ridiculous if we told them what we expected.

"Tyrants !" muttered the pirate colonel.

"Nay, my Redforth," said Alice, "say not so. Call not names, my Redforth, or they will apply to pa."

"Let 'em!" said the colonel. " I don't care. Who's he?"

Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remontrating with his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions above quoted.

"What remains for us to do?" Alice went on in her mild, wise way. " We must educate, we must pretend in a new manner, we must wait."

The colonel clenched his teeth—four out in front, and a piece of another, and he had been twice dragged to the door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his guards.

"How educate? How pretend in a new manner? How wait?"

"Educate the grown-up people," replied Alice. "We part to-night. Yes, Redforth,"—for the colonel tucked up his cuffs—"part to-night! Let us in these next holidays, now going to begin, throw our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning under a mask of romance; you, I, and Nettie. William Tinkling being the plainest and quickest writer, shall copy out. Ls it agreed?"

The colonel answered sulkily, "I don't mind." He then asked, "How about pretending?"

"We will pretend!" said Alice, "that we are children; not that we are those grown-up people who won't help us out as they ought, and who understand us so badly."