“Fine doings indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Crabtree, who had entered the room at this moment. “Have you forgotten already, Master Harry, how many of the nursery

plates you broke one day when I was out, in trying to copy that there foolish Indian juggler, who tossed his plates in the air, and twirled them on his thumb! There must be no more such nonsense; for if once your neck is broke by a fall off Tom Thumb, no doctor that I know of can mend it again. Remember what a terrible tumble you had off Jessy last year!”

[121]
]“You are always speaking about that little overturn, Mrs. Crabtree; and it was not worth recollecting above a week! Did you never see a man thrown off his horse before?”

“A man and horse indeed!” said uncle David, laughing, when he looked at Harry. “You and your charger were hardly large enough then for a toy-shop; and you must grow a little more, Captain Gulliver, before you will be fit for a dragoon regiment.”

Harry and Laura stayed very quietly at home for several weeks after their return from Holiday House, attending so busily to lessons, that uncle David said he felt much afraid they were going to be a pair of little wonders, who would die of too much learning.

“You will be taken ill of the multiplication table some day, and confined to bed with a violent fit of geography! Pray take care of yourselves, and do not devour above three books at once,” said Major Graham one day, entering the room with a note in his hand. “Here is an invitation that I suppose you are both too busy to accept, so perhaps I might as well send an apology; eh, Harry?”

Down dropped the lesson-books upon the floor, and up sprung Harry in an ecstacy of delight. “An invitation! Oh! I like an invitation so very much! Pray tell us all about it!”

“Perhaps it is an invitation to spend a month with Dr. Lexicon. What would you say to that? They breakfast upon Latin grammars at school, and have a dish of real French verbs, smothered in onions, for dinner every day.”

“But in downright earnest, uncle David! where are we going?”

“Must I tell you? Well! that good-natured old lady, Mrs. Darwin, intends taking a large party of children next week, in her own carriage, to pass ten days at Ivy Lodge, a charming country house about twenty miles off, where you are all to enjoy perfect happiness. I wish I could be ground [122] ]down into a little boy myself, for the occasion! Poor good woman! what a life she will lead! There is only one little drawback to your delight, that I am almost afraid to announce.”