“Just like the other day we went to see the sister-baby!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton; “but instead of finding him in a pleasant home and a nice room, with careful friends and nurses around him, he was in a manger out in a stable.”
“That was ’cause he was so smart that he could do just what he wanted to, an’ be just where he liked,” said Budge, “an’ he was a little boy, an’ little boys always like stables better than houses. I wish I could live in a stable always an’ for ever!”
“So do I,” said Toddie, “an’ sleep in mangers, ’cauzh den de horses would kick anybody dat made me put on clean clozhezh when I didn’t want to. Dey gaveded him presentsh, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton; “gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
“Why didn’t they give him rattles and squealey-balls, like folks did budder Phillie when he was a baby,” asked Toddie.
“Because, Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton, glad of an opportunity to get the sentiment of the story into her own hands, from which it had departed very early in the course of the lesson—“because he was no common baby, like other children.”
“Did he play around, like uvver little boysh?” continued Toddie.
“I—I—suppose so,” said Mrs. Burton, fearing lest in trying to instill reverence into her nephews, she herself might prove irreverent.
“Did somebody say ‘Don’t’ at him every time he did anyfing?” continued Toddie.