‘A regular little spoiled brat,’ Ida declared him.
While certainly the worse his father was said to be, the more his aunt tried to spoil and indulge him, as a relief to her pity and grief.
He had missed his home and parents a good deal at first, had cried at his lessons, and cried more at not having father to carry him to the nursery, nor mother to hear him say his prayers and kiss him at
night; but time wore off the association, and he was full of delight at the sea, the ships, the little crabs, and all the other charms of the shore.
Above all, he was excited about the little boys. His own kind had never come in his way before, his chief playfellow being Amice, who was so much older as to play with him condescendingly and always give way to him. There was a large family in a neighbouring lodging containing what he respectfully called ‘big knicker-bocker boys,’ who excited his intense admiration, and drew him like a magnet.
For once Mrs. Morton and Eden were agreed as to the propriety of the companionship, since Rollstone had pronounced them of ‘high family,’ and the governess who was in charge of them was quite ready to be interested in the solitary little stranger, even if he had not been the Honourable Michael. So was the elder girl of the party, but, unluckily, Michael was just of the age to be a great nuisance to children who played combined and imaginative games which he could not yet understand.
When they were making elaborate approaches to a sand fortification, erected with great care and pains, he would dash on it with a coup de main, break it down at once with his spade, and stand proudly laughing and mixing up the ruins together, heedless of the howls of anger of the besiegers, and believing that he had done the right thing.
And once, when a wrathful boy of eight had shaken the troublesome urchin as he would have done his own junior, had this last presumed to stir up his clear pool of curiosities, most of the female portion of the family had taken the part of the
intruder, and cried shame on any one who could hurt or molest a poor dear little boy away from a father who was so ill!
Thus the Lincoln family, for the sake of peace and self-defence, used sedulously to flee at the approach of Mite, and seek for secluded coves to which he was not likely to penetrate.