“Tell me, then, which is the principal town in Caffraria?”

“Is there any town there? I do not recollect it.”

“Then so much the worse!—how are you ever to get through life without knowing the chief town in Caffraria! I am quite ashamed of your ignorance. Now let us try a little arithmetic! Open the door of your understanding and tell me, when wheat is six shillings a bushel, what is the price of a penny loaf. Take your slate and calculate that.”

“Yes, uncle David, if you will find out, when gooseberries are two shillings the pint, what is the price of a threepenny tart. You remind me of my old nursery song—

‘The man in the wilderness asked me,

How many strawberries grew in the sea;

I answered him, as I thought it good,

As many red herrings as grew in the wood.’”

Some days after Laura had distributed the biscuits, she became very sorry for having squandered her shilling, without attending to Lady Harriet’s good advice, about keeping it carefully in her pocket for at least a week, to see what would happen. A very pleasant way of using money now fell in her way, but she had been a foolish spendthrift, so her pockets were empty, when she most wished them to be full. Harry came that morning after breakfast into the nursery, looking in a great bustle, and whispering to Laura, “What a pity your sixpence is gone! but as Mrs. Crabtree says, ‘we cannot both eat our cake and have it!’”

[52]
]“No!” answered Laura, as seriously as if she had never thought of this before, “but why do you so particularly wish my money back to-day?”