It is to be doubted whether this poor neglected baby had ever been christened. The children had given her a name of their own; they had called her Dickory
Dock. The reason they had given her this distinctive title was because the first amusement which had brought a smile to her little face had been the old play of Dickory Dock and the mouse that ran up the clock.
‘She said it,’ repeated Flossy, coming up close to her brother, and fixing her anxious eyes on the baby. ‘She said that our Dickory was to go to the workhouse.’
‘Well then, she shan’t!’ said Peter. ‘I know nothing about workhouses, but I expect they are very nasty places, and Dickory shan’t go there!’
Then he sat silent, his arm round the little child, who looked up at him and then back at Flossy, and then smiled in that wonderfully pathetic way she had.
‘Look here, Flossy,’ said Peter, ‘if you are quite certain sure that mother
said the workhouse, that she didn’t say nothing about Dickory Dock being put to sleep in another room, or maybe down in the kitchen—if you are quite positive about the workhouse, Flossy, why, I know what I’ll do.’
‘She did say the workhouse,’ answered Flossy; ‘I heard her with my own ears, and Mr Martin said it was a stream measure. I don’t know what he meant by that, but I do know that mother said the workhouse, and that she has got till to-morrow morning to take baby away.’
‘No, she hasn’t,’ said Peter; ‘we’ll take her away first, you and me, Flossy—you and me and Snip-snap—we’ll take our little baby away, and we’ll hide her. Dickory shall never go to no workhouse!’
Here Dickory looked up again at Peter, who looked down at her and