"I wish I was that kind of orphan!" sobbed Jane-Anne.
CHAPTER V
THEIR MEETING
"For may not a person be only five,
And yet have the neatest of taste alive?
As a matter of fact, this one has views
Of the strictest sort as to frocks and shoes."
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Little Herrick had no companions of her own age except for an occasional visit to cousins. Therefore did she invent comrades for herself and sternly impose them upon her family.
There was "Umpy dear" who, as his name suggested, was a meek, inefficient sort of person, often in trouble of various kinds, but always entirely amiable and desirous of pleasing. Quite other was "Mr. Woolykneeze," a stern, characterful personality who was quoted as an authority on all questions of manners and deportment. Even Janet, the commonsensical, trembled before Mr. Woolykneeze. One day at tea, having toothache, she had ventured to leave a piece of crust upon her plate, when Herrick remarked it and said sternly, "Mr. Woolykneeze thinks it's very impolite to leave bits, 'specially crusts," and poor Janet was fain to soak the crust in her tea and mumble it that way rather than offend this mysterious and invisible censor.
When asked the age of "Umpy dear," Herrick always persisted that he was "three months and one day." He never grew any older and his social solecisms were surely excusable in one of such tender age. "Mrs. Miff" was "Umpy dear's" mother, and her character was believed to have been founded on that of a charwoman who occasionally came to the house. Like her offspring she was meek and rather feckless, frequently arousing the wrath of Mr. Woolykneeze by her untidy and careless habits.
No one knew whence Herrick got the names or how she divined their various characters, but the people were there and had come to stay, and her family had to put up with them.
Her visit to Oxford opened up whole vistas of new possibilities. Here were two real boys with whom she had been allowed to play. It is true that they did not fall into her scheme with that instant understanding and obedience to which she was accustomed from her parents, but still they played after a fashion, a new and piquant fashion, and Herrick went back to the King's Arms after her visit to Holywell chattering incessantly of "Monkagu" and "Emmund," and demanding an instant return to their society. She wept bitterly when she found she could not go back that night, and declared that Mr. Woolykneeze and Umpy dear were equally upset. Her father suggested that these gentlemen might stroll round by themselves, when Herrick, regarding him with tearful astonishment, sobbed out: "They'd never be so unkind as to go wivout me. Besides, Umpy dear might spill something on your uncle's best carpet. Can't I take them?"
"Not to-night, I fear."