Children of the Dear Cotswolds

by L. Allen Harker

Fuzzy's Nana was of a literary turn, spending a large proportion of the salary she received for her attentions to Fuzzy on the lighter kinds of fiction. On this particular afternoon, having wheeled him in his go-cart some distance along the high road, "she sat her down upon a green bank," and bidding him "Play about, there's a good boy, and pick some pretty flowers for mama!" she was soon immersed in a periodical, bearing a bloodcurdling device upon the cover.

Fuzzy gathered a bunch of celandines, and with them clasped tightly in his hot, fat hand, set off at a run down the road, giggling delightedly when he discovered that Nana neither called him nor yet started in pursuit.

Trotting gleefully along for some little distance he turned off into an inviting-looking lane. He kept close to the hedge for there was a sound of galloping hoofs, and Fuzzy was an extremely sensible small boy. Then there passed him a horse and dogcart, the horse going at a hand gallop, the dogcart empty. This struck Fuzzy as strange, but then strange things do happen when one sets forth to seek adventures. So he girded up his stocking which had become uncomfortably wrinkly and trudged on.

Presently he saw a man lying by the side of the road. Now Fuzzy had a large acquaintance among road men, and for tramps he felt a real affection. Had they not sometimes got white rats in their pockets? Nay, those of a superior sort even carried ferrets! He and his mother were wont to bestow pence on tramps, and on the road men, boots and the professor's old coats. In fact the professor was often heard to complain that he met his favourite coat by a heap of stones every time he went out. Fuzzy advanced fearlessly to inspect this weary man, who was lying on his face, with one arm doubled up under him in the strangest fashion. The man did not move as Fuzzy came up, and the little boy went and stood by the prostrate form, saying, with a comical imitation of his father:—"Thirsty weather, eh?" but the usual "It be that, Master!" did not follow.

The afternoon was very still. The sound of galloping hoofs and bumping wheels had died away in the distance. Suddenly Fuzzy gave a little cry—"Bookie! Bookie dear! are you hurted? Why do you lie in the road? gentlemens don't lie in the road—O Bookie! your foot is bad, it's all bleedy and dreadful!"

The Bookie did not answer, "he kind of snored" as Fuzzy afterwards described it. The child tried to turn him over on his back, but the Bookie being six foot two, and proportionately broad, and Fuzzy by no means tall for his age, this proved an impossible feat.

"I'm afraid he's hurted very bad, his face is so red and dirty," said Fuzzy to himself. Then, with Herculean efforts, he succeeded in inserting his own legs under the Bookie's head, so that it rested on his clean holland smock. He stroked the tumbled hair, and laid his soft little face upon the Bookie's hot, prickly cheek. They remained thus for what seemed to Fuzzy an interminable time. He began to grow sleepy himself. His head nodded, and finally he too fell over on to his back sound asleep.

When the Bookie came to himself he lay still for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. He discovered that his arm was certainly broken, that a wheel had gone over his ankle, that his face was resting on something soft, and that not ten inches from his face was a pair of small, dusty strap-shoes.

This last discovery completely sobered him. He raised himself on his good arm and looked down at the something which had been supporting him. A golden head, resting on two plump arms crossed behind it; sturdy legs, crushed by his weight, which now drew themselves up stretching out again as if relieved ... and then the Bookie realised that Fuzzy had found him, and had stayed to keep guard.

"God help me for a drunken beast! and I can't carry him for my arm's broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy. The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you till you woked up."