“Fank you,” said Davie.
“Thank you, da—” prompted Billy.
“Daddy,” wound up Davie, triumphantly. “There ain’t no flower-womans now,” he added, dubiously. “They was a lot at Margit.”
“I’ll be a flower-woman, Davie,” said his father, cheerily. “Wouldn’t you like to have this beautiful flower—this rose in my button-hole—for your penny, to give to mummy?”
“Yeth—I wants it,” said Davie, clutching greedily for it.
“Gently, or all the lovely pink leaves will fall out. And you must give me your penny, you know.”
Davie, with a perplexed air, vaguely conscious of commercial transactions too complicated for his intellect, hesitatingly retendered the penny, and, receiving the rose, was set down on the carpet. He ran eagerly to the door, blowing one disconsolate, irrelevant blast on the whistle, and then the brothers heard him tumble down the oilcloth-covered stairs with three thuds, followed by shrill ululations. They ran to the head of the stairs, but Rosina had already rushed forth to pick up her child, and her soothing prattle, varied by scolding for his careless hurry, made a duet with his howls.
“Where did you get that flower from? You’ve crumpled it all to pieces.” She extracted it from the fingers that had closed upon it tenaciously when the fall commenced.
“From the gen’leman. Him what I calls daddy. It’s for you, mummy.”
“Tell him he can keep it!”