Well, every morning Binkie and Dumpty trudged off to school together. Dumpty's favourite lesson was writing, he simply loved doing copies, and once he got a prize for writing; he was quite delighted about it, and often wished he could get another, and after being at school four years, at last he did—that was for scripture.
Dumpty used to stay at school all day and had dinner with the big boys; in the afternoon there was "prep," and at four o'clock school was over and all the boys were jolly glad.
On his way home from school Dumpty used to stop and get cow-parsley for his rabbits, and when silkworms were "in" he used to have to go into Binkie's garden to get mulberry leaves, because Binkie's father had a mulberry tree in his garden and Dumpty's Mother hadn't. One day when Dumpty got in from school he found that a horrid great rat had got into the empty hutch where he kept all his grain for feeding his pets and had eaten it all and bitten one of the baby pigeons! He was so sad about it—but Binkie's father soon brought in his dogs and they caught the nasty rat. Dumpty's Mother often said she didn't know what she would do without her kind neighbour the Blacksmith.
Well, by the time Master Dumpty got in from school it was pretty well tea time, and in the summer he and his Mother often had it in the garden, not too far from the house, so that if anyone came into the shop they could hear, that is to say they might hear if he banged on the counter loud, or shut the shop door with a slam;—then Dumpty would run fast and serve in the shop for his Mother. Sometimes the customers were such a long time choosing a peppermint stick or a few glass beads that Dumpty thought he should never get back to his tea;—and they had radishes and lettuce out of their own garden. And directly after tea Little Dumpty did just what he liked till bed-time.
I must tell you now about the things Little Dumpty did like: there were lots of things, and he liked them all in turn.
One thing he loved was ponding, which began as soon as the days were warm enough. He used to go with a net and a little tin pail and catch all kinds of fish and little insects out of the pond and put them in his aquarium, but he called it his "acquair." His "acquair" was a glass bell stood on its end and filled at the bottom with sand, and on top with water for the things to swim about in. Minnows, and sometimes sticklebats (but not generally sticklebats, because, though they looked nice they used to eat up the other things so), and of course tadpoles (when they were "in") and water-snails with pointed shells and caddis-worms and water boatmen, and "little reddies"—oh! and anything he caught in his net. Little Dumpty used to bring them all home in his pail and keep them in the "acquair."