“Only spotted it, Maria, and it was clean water. I certainly thought it rained as I went under his window.”
“Yes, and you fetched your umbrella.”
“I did, Maria. But he’s better now. Give him his physic regular, and it does him good.”
“Did you find out what was the matter with those salts and senny!”
“No, Maria, I did not. I had to break the glass to get it out; set hard as a stone. It was a good job he did not take it.”
Mrs Millett never did find out that Dexter had poured in cement till the glass would hold no more, and his medicine became a solid lump.
“Ah, you’ll be tired of him soon,” said Maria.
“No, I don’t think I shall, Maria. You see he’s a boy, and he does behave better. Since I told him not, he hasn’t taken my basting-spoon to melt lead for what he calls nickers; and then he hasn’t repeated that wicked cruel trick of sitting on the wall.”
“Why, I see him striddling the ridge of the old stable, with his back to the weathercock, only yesterday.”
“Yes, Maria, but he wasn’t fishing over the wall with worms to try and catch Mrs Biggins’s ducks, a very cruel trick which he promised me he wouldn’t do any more; and he hasn’t pretended to be a cat on the roof, nor yet been to me to extract needles which he had stuck through his cheeks out of mischief; and I haven’t seen him let himself down from the stable roof with a rope; and, as I told him, that clothes-line wasn’t rope.”