“Now then,” said Tim Ruggles, “we mustn’t have no more sobbing and sighing, you know, but get on with working, and eddication, and what not, before some one comes home, and goes off. Now what were we doing last, my pretty?”
“Reading,” said little Pine, absently.
“Mistake,” said Tim. “It was cate—cate—well, what was it?”
“Chism,” said the child; “catechism.”
“Right,” said Tim. “Now, let’s see; it was duty towards my neighbour, and if we don’t look sharp as a seven—between we shall never get through that beautiful little bit. Eddication, my pretty, is the concrete, atop of which they build society; and if I’d been an eddicated man and known a few things—”
“But you know everything, don’t you?” queried Pine.
“Well, no, my dear, not quite,” said Tim, rubbing one side of his nose, and gazing in a a comical way at the child.
“But you are very clever, ain’t you.”
“Oh, dear me, no; not at all,” said Tim; “leastwise, without it’s in trousis, and there I ain’t so much amiss. But come, I say, this won’t do; this is catechism wrong side out, so go on.”
Then slowly on to the accompaniment of the metal polishing—the lid being by this time succeeded by a brass candlestick—and the sharp click of Tim’s needle, the portion of catechism under consideration progressed till it was brought to a full stop over the words, “Succour my father and mother,” when Tim was, to use his own words, quite knocked off his perch by the child’s question—