“No, my son; during the Summer months the steam-engine and the firemen rest.”
The trembling of the coachman’s box causes Artie to look up at his companion’s face, and there learns from the glittering ivories that he is a victim to one of Papa’s jokes.
Now it is a very curious fact, that young folk, yea, and old folk too, who are very fond of “quizzing” others, seldom like the ball returned; and so Master Artie refrained from further questions, and cast a stealthy glance behind to see if
“That little Leonard chap knew he had been quizzed;” but the little “chap” is busy whispering to the Monkeys:
“I do believe Aunt Emma is going to surprise us all by a visit to the old Brown Farm, with its cows, and pigs, and chickens, and old Poll the Parrot, and the kind Grandma that gives children berries and milk out under a big, big tree. Now be sure,” he adds, “you are surprised, ’cause if you are not, Aunt Emma will be disappointed, and, after all, Jack, you needn’t say ‘Goody, goody,’ for like as not I don’t know anything about it, and we are going to the Asylum, or somewhere another.”
“Charlie, if we do go to the Brown Farm, will we be sure to see Silly-chick and the old Portulak that bit off the little Singing Bird’s head, ’cause it didn’t know manners?”
“Daisy, what is the little fellow talking about? He speaks so fast I can’t know what he means.”
“Why, he thinks, Charlie, that everything in Artie’s Wonder Book is true and for fair, like you believe your Mother Goose.”
“Oh, but Daisy, Mother Goose is real for fair. I have seen her at a party, and the very ‘old woman that lived in her shoe and had the many children;’ there they were, sure enough, Daisy, for one of them, who was peeping out of the bursted toe of the shoe, was eating bread and butter, and winked his eye at me, and another little fellow sneezed and seemed to have a dreadful cold in his head. What was that but sure-enough-alive, I should like to know?”