Page:Piccino and Other Child Stories (1897).djvu/106

94 "Rabbett," says he, "there's a change in the programme this time."

I drops my swab in a minute and draws up and salutes again.

"What, sir?" says I. "Boy, sir?"

"Yes," says he. "Boy, and a fine little fellow too."

So in the course of a week I smartens myself up a bit more than common, in honor of the occasion, and goes into the house and gets the ayah to let me have a look at the young gentleman as he lay in his cradle in the nursery, next to the mistress's room. They was rather fond of me in that nursery, I may say, and it wasn't the first time I'd been there by many a one. But though I stepped light enough for fear of wakening the little fellow, somehow or other he did waken that very minute. As I bent over his cradle he opens his eyes, and he actually stares at me as if he was asking me a question or so. At least it looked that way to me, and then, as sure as I'm a living man, he does something with his face as if he was doing his best to laugh; and when I laughs back and lifts his bit of a red hand, he opens it out and lets it lay on mine, quite friendly and sociable.

I won't say as he knew what he were doing, but I will say as he looked as if he did. And from that minute to the last hour of his life Master Lionel and me was friends fast and firm. Not