"Perhaps you can come to us. I really do not think we can spare him; we have so much to do in the way of preparation."
It was an admirable providence that my whole time was, from morning to night, taken up with my family. My sisters, assisted by Margareth, made me a dozen shirts, and hemmed for me three dozen handkerchiefs. I was being measured or fitted all day, and all the evening was running up and down stairs with the completed items. Oh! if you had seen my boxes you would have said that I ought to be very good to be so cared for, and very beautiful besides; yet I was neither, and was sorely longing to be away,—such kindness pained me more than it pleased. I had a little jointed bed, which you would not have believed was a bed until it was set up. My mother admonished me if I found my bed comfortable to keep that in my box; but she had some experience of German beds, and English ones too, under certain circumstances. I had a gridiron, and a coffee-pot, a spirit-lamp, and a case containing one knife and fork, one plate, one spoon. I had everything I could possibly want, and felt dreadfully bewildered. Clo was marking my stockings one morning when Davy came in; he gave me one of his little brown boxes, and in the box was a single cup and saucer of that glowing, delicate china. When he pulled it out of his pocket I little knew what it was, and when I found out, how I cried!
"I have, indeed, brought you a small remembrance, Charles; but I am a small man, and you are a small boy, and I understand you are to have a very small establishment."
He said this cheerily, but I could not laugh; he put his kind arm round me, and I only wept the more. Clo was all the time quite seriously, as I have said, tracing ineffaceably my initials in German text, with crimson cotton,—none of your delible inks,—and Davy pretended to be very much interested in them.
"What! all those stockings, Charles?"
"Yes, sir: you see we have provided for summer and winter," responded Clo, as seriously as I have mentioned. "He will not want any till we see him again, for he is to pay us a visit, if God spares him, next Christmas."
Davy sighed, and kissed my forehead; I clung to him. "Shall I see you again, Mr. Davy?"
"I have come to ask your mother whether I may take you to London; it is precisely what I came for, and I have a little plan."
Davy had actually an engagement in London, or feigned to have one,—I have never been able to discover whether it was a fact or a fiction; and he proposed to my mother that I should sleep with him at his aunt's house one night before I was deposited at the hotel where Santonio rested, and to which he had advised I should be brought.
I was in fits of delight at the idea of Davy's company; yet, after all, I did not have much of that, for he travelled to London on the top of the coach, and I was an inside passenger at my mother's request.