They went a few steps together; then Pauly stopped, with an expression of dismay on his round baby face. “Oh, bover, big girl, my shoe is stuck like my teef in toffee!”
Sydney knelt down to investigate, and extract the little shoe which had stuck so tightly in the mud. But, alas! in the tug Pauly had given it the frail bottom had come off.
Sydney picked up the sodden shoe and put it in his hand.
“Get on my back, Pauly, and I’ll carry you.”
Pauly liked this idea, and shouted gleefully, as, with much effort upon Sydney’s part, his sturdy little form was hoisted to her shoulders, and his muddy toes, one shoeless, put into her hands.
“Oh, Pauly, you are wet!” she cried. “I expect your mother will put you into dry socks the minute you get home.”
“Me and daddy haven’t got no muvvers,” Pauly said. “There’s ‘In Memorwy of Wose’ in the churchyard. God wented and wanted muvver, that was why. Gee-up, horse!”
Poor Sydney! the “geeing-up” was not so easy. Pauly was no light weight. Her face grew scarlet and her breath a little gasping. She sincerely hoped the vicarage was not far away, and was not sorry when, as they turned into its drive, a tall figure came hurrying to meet them.
“Daddy!” shouted Pauly gleefully, and, as Mr. Seaton hastened to remove the burden from the tired horse, he explained: “Got frew the hedge of the kitchen garden, daddy, and fell down a gweat big way, and there was this gweat big girl there, and she caught me in her gweat big hands!”