“But perhaps your husband will be a sober man, like father, and won’t want company, only people like Mr. Doe.”
“But my husband will be young, you little goose,” said Susy.
“Well—wasn’t father young when mother married him?” said the persistent Neddy, whirling off his top.
“I suppose so,” said Susy, with a sigh, “but it don’t seem as if he ever was. Where’s the Arabian Nights, Neddy, that you borrowed of Tom Hunt? let’s read a story.”
“Father made me carry it back,” said Neddy; “he said it was nonsense, and I shouldn’t read it.”
“That’s just why I like it,” said Susy; “of course, nobody believes it true—and I’m so tired of sense! Isn’t there any thing up in the book-rack there, Neddy?”
“I’ll see,” said Neddy, stretching his neck up out of his clean white collar—“I’ll see—here’s Moral Philosophy, Key to Daboll’s Arithmetic, Sermons by Rev. John Pyne, Essays by Calvin Croaker, Guide to Young Wives, Rules for Eating, Walking and Talking, Complete Letter Writer, Treatise on Pneumatics, Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. Which will you have?” asked Neddy, with a comical whine.
“Hush!” said Susy, “there’s father’s step.”
Mr. Wade had come up to get his soft lamb’s-wool slippers for Mr. Doe, that gentleman having experienced a chill in his left toe joint.
“Playing top,” said he, contemptuously, looking at Neddy; “at your age, sir, I was wheeling stone for a mason, in the day-time, and studying arithmetic evenings. Where’s your Daboll, sir? Study your pound and pence table; that’s what’s to be the making of you; how do you expect to become a man of business without that? You’ll never drive a good bargain—you’ll be cheated out of your eye-teeth. Get your Daboll, sir, and Susy, do you hear him say it. Tops are for babies, sir; a boy of your age ought to be almost as much a man as his father. How should I look playing top? God didn’t make the world to play in.” And Mr. Wade and his lamb’s-wool slippers slipped down stairs.