“Look, muvver, look at my dog? I’ve got a dog, muvver! Look, faver, I’ve got a dog! Look, I say! Look, look!”
Her parents had just focussed their sleepy eyes on the dog when it was flung on the floor, and the monkey was being waved in its place.
“Look, muvver, I’ve got a monkey! And he’s climbing up and down. Look, faver, look at my monkey. Oh, do look!”
The monkey’s triumph was brief, his degradation swift. The fickle mob had found another favourite.
“Oh, muvver, look at my baa-lamb. I’ve got a little baa-lamb, faver. Look at my pretty little woolly baa-lamb, faver,” she shouted imperiously.
But the lamb immediately followed his colleagues to the floor.
“And I’ve got a rub-a-dub-dub and a wheedle-wheedle and an apple and an orange. And I saw Santy Claus come down the chiminy, and had a most anormous beard you ever saw and he said, ‘How d’ye do, Tizia, will you give me a nice kiss?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and he gived me a kiss, and he put fousands and fousands of lovely fings into my stocking. Wasn’t Mrs. Porridge kind to give me her stocking because it was so anormous? And please can I come and get into bed with you and bring my trumpet?”
“Come along, darling,” invited Nancy, holding out her arms.
Letizia climbed very cautiously out of her cot and was lifted up on the bed and deposited between her father and mother, where she sat and blew her trumpet without a stop until her father picked up his pillow and pretended to smother her.
“Hullo,” Bram exclaimed, looking at the little box which was thus uncovered. “Here’s something of mother’s under father’s pillow.”