"Well, mum, I was going to tell you," she continued, without hurrying, "when I had bought the cotton and the silk, it came to my mind to buy a packet of post-cards and two shillings' worth of stamps. But the rector's young ladies had come in, and being pressed for time, Mrs. Thompson, she says to me, 'I make no doubt but that you will let me serve the young ladies first'; to which I made answer, 'I wait your pleasure'. But Master Chris he gets cross, because he wants to go on home at once and roll his new hoop. 'Come along, old Briggs!' he says; 'come along, you old slow-coach!' Such behaviour, such language! Before the young ladies from the rectory, too! Where he learnt it I'm sure I can't tell. Not from me, I do assure you, mum," she concluded with indignation.
"It was very naughty of him," Granny remarked mildly.
"But that was not all, mum," the irate Briggs continued; "for all the way home he walks in front of me, tossing his head and singing as loud as possible, 'For I'm a jolly good fellow'; and Jack there barking and making such a row alongside of him; it was for all the world like a wild-beast show. Nothing I could say could stop the pair of them."
She paused to allow Granny to take in the full extent of Chris's enormity. As she did so, a scampering of little feet was heard outside, the handle of the door was impatiently turned—first the wrong way, and then rattled angrily. Finally the door itself was burst open, and that little beggar ran in, with excited countenance; the big holland pinafore, in which Briggs insisted upon enveloping him, and his especial detestation, half dropping off him, and trailing behind on the ground.
"Granny," he began immediately, "is 'For he's a jolly good fellow', that Uncle Godfrey sings, a wicked song?"
"It's very naughty of you to behave rudely to Briggs," she replied gravely.
Looking round, Chris's eyes fell upon Briggs, whom at first he had not noticed; then, realizing that she had been first in the field, he burst into a loud, tearless wail.
"Briggs, you're a nasty, nasty thing, and I hate you!" he cried vehemently, stamping his foot as he spoke.
"There, mum! Is that the way for a young gentleman to speak?" she asked, not without a certain triumph.
"I don't like you!" Chris cried, stamping his foot again. "You are always cross! Nasty, cross, old Briggs!"