Granny smiled at him tenderly, and shook her head.
"No, dear," I said; "you have not been naughty. We did not mean that."
Thus reassured, the little beggar looked relieved; then, with a glance of deepest sympathy at his Granny, he ran out of the room as if struck by a sudden thought.
In a few moments he returned, carrying something carefully wrapped up in his pinafore. Then, going up to her, he drew out a piece of paste bearing some rude resemblance to a man, and laid it with triumph on her lap.
"My Granny," he whispered proudly, "see what I have brought you. Cook gave it to me for my tea, and I'm going to give it to you, and you may eat it all up; every bit. P'r'aps it will make you feel happy, as you have a cold."
Granny opened her eyes slowly and languidly, but seeing the paste figure, she sat straight up in her chair, with an expression of the strongest disapprobation.
She opened her mouth and endeavoured to speak, but this time without success; she could not make herself heard. She rose, therefore, and going to the writing-desk, took a sheet of note-paper, and, in a neat, old-fashioned, Italian hand, wrote the following reply, which she placed in my hand, signing to me to read aloud:
"My darling, this is a most unwholesome and indigestible thing. It would not make either my Chris or his Granny happy to eat it, but would probably make them both ill. I am much surprised that Mrs. James should have given it to you; she should have known better. You may, instead, have some of the sponge-cake we had at lunch, but I cannot permit my pet to eat this paste, nor can I eat it myself. But he will understand how much Granny appreciates his kind thought."
Chris listened to this long message attentively and without interruption, for there was a solemnity about the proceeding that much impressed him. When I had finished reading it, he regarded the object of Granny's displeasure with suspicion, mingled with awe; then remarked in a solemn and stage whisper, and in the manner of one bringing a grave charge against his poor, misguided friend:
"Cook called it 'Master Chris's little friend'. That's what she called it, my Granny."