“Then there is somebody that I shall speak about very often.”

“Who can this Mr. Somebody be?” asked uncle David, smiling. “A foolish person that spoils you both I dare say, and gives you large slices of bread and jelly like this. Hold them carefully! Now, good bye, and joy be with you.”

But it was with rather rueful faces that Harry and Laura left the room, wishing they might have remained another [95] ]hour to talk nonsense with uncle David, and dreading to think what new scrapes and difficulties they would get into in the nursery, which always seemed to them a place of torture and imprisonment.

Major Graham used to say that Mrs. Crabtree should always have a thermometer in her own room when she dressed, to tell her whether the weather was hot or cold, for she seemed to feel no difference, and scarcely ever made any change in her own attire, wearing always the same pink gown and scarlet shawl, which made her look like a large red flower-pot, while she was no more annoyed with the heat than a flower-pot would have been. On this very oppressive morning she took as much pains in suffocating Harry with a silk handkerchief round his neck, as if it had been Christmas, and though Laura begged hard for leave to go without one of her half-a-dozen wrappings, she might as well have asked permission to go without her head, as Mrs. Crabtree seemed perfectly deaf upon the subject.

“This day is so very cold and so very shivering,” said Harry, slyly, “that I suppose you will make Laura wear at least fifty shawls.”

“Not above twenty,” answered Mrs. Crabtree, dryly. “Give me no more of your nonsense, Master Harry! This is no business of yours! I was in the world long before you were born, and must know best; so hold your tongue. None but fools and beggars need ever be cold.”

At last Mrs. Crabtree had heaped as many clothes upon her two little victims, as she was pleased to think necessary; so she sallied forth with them, followed by Betty, and proceeded towards the country, taking the sunny side of the road, and raising clouds of dust at every step, till Harry and Laura felt as if they had been made of wax, and were melting away.

“Mrs. Crabtree!” said Harry, “did you hear uncle David’s funny story yesterday? One hot morning a [96] ]gentleman was watching an ant’s nest, when he observed, that every little insect, as it came out, plucked a small leaf, to hold over its head, as a parasol! I wish we could find leaves large enough for us.”

“You must go to the Botanical Gardens, where one leaf of a palm-tree was shown to grandmama, which measured fourteen feet long,” observed Laura. “How horrid these very warm countries must be, where the heat is all the year round like this!”

“You may well say that,” answered Mrs. Crabtree. “I would not go to them East Indies—no! not if I were Governess-General,—to be running away with a tiger at your back, and sleeping with real live serpents twisted round the bed-post, and scorpions under your pillow! Catch me there! I’m often quite sorry for Master Frank, to think that his ship is maybe going that way! I’m told the very rats have such a smell in that outlandish place, that if they touch the outside of a bottle with their tails, it tastes of musk ever after; and when people are sitting comfortably down, expecting to enjoy their dinner, a swarm of great ants will come, and fall, an inch thick, on all the side-dishes. I’ve no desire whatever to see foreign parts!”