Thomasina soon found that her charge was safest, as he was happiest, out of doors. A very successful device was to shut him up in the drying-ground, and tell him to “pick the pretty flowers.” John Broom preferred flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered nosegays of daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he would present these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent eyes, for many a smashed teacup.
But the tramp-baby’s restless spirit was soon weary of the drying ground, and he set forth one morning in search of “fresh fields and pastures new.” He had seated himself on the threshold to take off his shoes, when he heard the sound of Thomasina’s footsteps, and, hastily staggering to his feet, toddled forth without farther delay. The sky was blue above him, the sun was shining, and the air was very sweet. He ran for a bit and then tumbled, and picked himself up again, and got a fresh impetus, and so on till he reached the door of the kitchen garden, which was open. It was an old-fashioned kitchen-garden with flowers in the borders. There were single rose-colored tulips which had been in the garden as long as Miss Betty could remember, and they had been so increased by dividing the clumps that they now stretched in two rich lines of color down both sides of the long walk. And John Broom saw them.
“Pick the pretty f’owers, love,” said he, in imitation of Thomasina’s patronising tone, and forthwith beginning at the end, he went steadily to the top of the right-hand border mowing the rose-colored tulips as he went.
Meanwhile, when Thomasina came to look for him, he could not be found, and when all the back premises and the drying-ground had been searched in vain, she gave the alarm to the little ladies.
Miss Kitty’s vivid imagination leaped at once to the conclusion that the child’s vagabond relations had fetched him away, and she became rigid with alarm. But Miss Betty rushed out into the shrubbery and Miss Kitty took a whiff of her vinaigrette and followed her.
When they came at last to the kitchen-garden, Miss Betty’s grief for the loss of John Broom did not prevent her observing that there was something odd about the borders, and when she got to the top, and found that all the tulips had been picked from one side, she sank down on the roller which happened to be lying beside her.
And John Broom staggered up to her, and crying “For ’oo, Miss Betty,” fell headlong with a sheaf of rose-colored tulips into her lap.
As he did not offer any to Miss Kitty, her better judgment was not warped, and she said, “You must slap him, sister Betty.”
“Put out your hand, John Broom,” said Miss Betty, much agitated.
And John Broom, who was quite composed, put out both his little grubby paws so trustfully that Miss Betty had not the heart to strike him. But she scolded him, “Naughty boy!” and she pointed to the tulips and shook her head. John Broom looked thoughtfully at them, and shook his.