When he had added these two words to his little vocabulary, his mother asked him if he would be good enough to tell her why he did not care much about all the beautiful flowers in the garden, and was so excited about cowslips, which appeared to her a flower of no great beauty, and the smell rather sickly, begging his pardon.
This question posed him dreadfully: he looked at her in a sort of comic distress, and then sat gravely down all in a heap, about a yard off, to think.
Finally he turned to her with a wry face, and said, “Why do I, mamma?”
She smiled deliciously. “No, no, sir,” said she. “How can I get inside your little head and tell what is there? There must be a reason, I suppose; and you know you and I are never satisfied till we get at the reason of a thing. But there is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to find it out. Now, run and open the gate—stay, are there any cows in that field?”
“Sometimes, mamma; but they have no horns, you know.”
“Upon your word?”
“Upon my honor. I am not fond of them with horns, myself.”
“Then run away, darling. But you must come and hunt me up, and tell me how you enjoyed yourself, because that makes me happy, you know.”
This is mawkish; but it will serve to show on what terms the woman and boy were.
On second thoughts, I recall that apology, and defy creation. “THE MAWKISH” is a branch of literature, a great and popular one, and I have neglected it savagely.