“Why, father, it was years ago; you were on your first tour in America, I must have been about twelve, and Tom fourteen. We had only just settled in here, you know; and one unlucky Saturday we were playing in the garden at 'King of the Castle.'”
“What's that?” asked Raeburn.
“Why, Tom was king, and I was the Republican Army; and Tom was standing on the top of the wall trying to push me down. He had to sing:
“'I'm the king of the castle! Get down, you dirty rascal!'
And somehow I don't know how it was instead of climbing up, I pushed him backward by mistake, and he went down with an awful crash into the next garden. We knew it was the garden belonging to No. 16 quite a large one it is for the hospital hasn't any. And when at last I managed to scramble on to the wall, there was Tom, head downward, with his feet sticking up through the roof of a greenhouse, and the rest of him all among the flower pots.”
Raeburn laughed heartily.
“There was a brute of a cactus jammed against my face, too,” said Tom. “How I ever got out alive was a marvel!”
“Well, what happened?” asked Raeburn.
“Why, we went round to tell the No. 16 people. Tom waited outside, because he was so frightfully cut about, and I went in and saw an old, old man a sort of Methusaleh who would ask my name, and whether I had anything to do with you.”
“What did you say to him?”