"I am vulgar enough to have dined, Mrs. Gower," said Smyth, meeting them at the door of the library.
"As you please," she said, gaily, giving her hand; "'let ilka ane gang their ain gait.'"
"Your son is acting on that motto, Mrs. Dale," he said, looking from the window. "Don't stir, he is in the back way; and has evidently been wrestling with our York mud."
At this juncture Garfield appeared, breathless; and his pretty Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers all be-spattered.
"How did you come to grief, my son?" asked his father.
"Well, papa; first, I knocked down a sparrow with my catapult; it died game, falling on a foreign bird perched on a lady's steeple bonnet. Well, she was mad, phew! called me names for killing birds. I told her not to try to be funny, when she had stuffed ones on her head-dress. Next, I saw a man down street putting a mouth on his poor horse; man! how he sawed, tore the bit nearly through his head; well, I just let another lead fly, knocking his Christy stiff into the mud; then, he out of his butcher waggon and after me. I remembered some dimes in my pocket, got 'em, threw 'em behind—he bit, and I took my chance and distanced him," he said, panting for breath.
"That was sport," said Smyth, laughingly; "but I have had to shut down on my boy's hunting, we swell our city treasury by fining such fire-arms."
"Go to the kitchen, you poor little man," said Mrs. Gower; "and ask Thomas to brush you; he will get you some lunch, there is mud even in your curls; here, let me kiss you."
"Yes, you may," he said, condescendingly.
"Come along, son; mother will go with you."