Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/41

Rh the Malabar.' He was an admiral once. But he liked it. He is a nice old gentleman, but people do say he is 'excentric.'

Father got a poem that said:

And he laughed and seemed pleased; but when Mrs. Morrison, Albert's mother, got that poem about the black beetle that was poisoned she was not so pleased, and she said it was horrid, and made her flesh creep. You know the poem. It says:

Noël would recite, no matter what we said, and he stood up on a chair, and everyone, in their blind generousness, paid sixpence to hear him.