“I hope she changed her frock,” said Mrs. Bayes.
“I believe she did,” said Mr. Bayes. “They’ve gone to Chidley Woods, where the Richardsons will meet them, and they won’t be back till six. Now perhaps I may get on with my lunch.”
By the following Saturday evening, I may add, the Bayes children and the Calderon children were very friendly, and Arthur Lloyd Bayes had fallen off Harold Armiger Calderon’s pony twice.
THE THOUSAND THREEPENNY
BITS
THE
THOUSAND THREEPENNY BITS
I
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alison Muirhead, and she had a doll named Rosamund and a dog named Thomson. The dog was an Aberdeen terrier, and he came from Aberdeen by train in the care of the guard, and he rarely did what he was told, which is the way of Aberdeens, as you have perhaps discovered.
Alison used to take her doll and Thomson every day into Kensington Gardens, and when they were well inside the Gardens, opposite the tulips and the new statue of William III., she used to unclasp the catch of Thomson’s lead and let him run, doing her best to keep an eye on him. This was not easy, for Thomson was a sociable dog, and he rushed after every other dog he saw, and either told them the latest dog joke or heard it, and Alison was often in despair to get him back.
If, however, Thomson had been an angel of a dog this story would never have been written, because it was wholly owing to his naughtiness that Alison and the Old Gentleman met.