'Limby, my darling boy,' said his mamma, 'my sweet cherub, my only dearest, do take its oily poily—there's a ducky, deary—and it shall ride in a coachy poachy.'
'O! the dear baby,' said the nurse, 'take it for nursey. It will take it for nursey—that it will.'
The nurse had got the oil in a silver medicine spoon, so contrived that if you could get it into the
child's mouth the medicine must go down. Limby, however, took care that no spoon should go into his mouth; and when the nurse tried the experiment for the nineteenth time, gave a plunge and a kick, and sent the spoon up to the ceiling, knocked off nurse's spectacles, upset the table on which all the bottles and glasses were, and came down whack on the floor.
His mother picked him up, clasped him to her breast, and almost smothered him with kisses. 'O! my dear boy,' said she, 'it shan't take the nasty oil—it won't take it, the darling; naughty nurse to hurt baby: it shall not take nasty physic'; and then she kissed him again.
Poor Limby, although only two years old, knew what he was at—he was trying to get the master of
his mamma; he felt he had gained his point, and gave another kick and a squall, at the same time planted a blow on his mother's eye.
'Dear little creature,' said she, 'he is in a state of high convulsions and fever—he will never recover.'
But Limby did recover, and in a few days was running about the house, and the master of it; there was nobody to be considered, nobody to be consulted, nobody to be attended to, but Limby Lumpy.