[The beautiful man and the lovely lady on the china mug.]
“He had on a blue coat, and his hair was all white, and”—
“O Polly! was he so very old?” cried Van from his sofa-corner.
“Dear me, no!” said Polly again; “he was young and most beautiful, but his hair was powdered, just as the man’s is in the big picture in the drawing-room; and it was tied up in the back with a bow of ribbon just like that one too; and he had buckles on his knees, and on his shoes, just the very same. Well, he kept bowing and bowing all the time, and the lovely lady with the pink sash on, and the basket of roses hanging on her arm, kept courtesying to him all the time; and they had been doing that for two or three hundred years.”
“O Polly Pepper!” exclaimed Percy quite shocked; “how could they bow and courtesy for two hundred years?”
“Well, they did,” said Polly, hurrying on; “and”—
“If you interrupt again, out you go,” from Jasper.
“And at last one night when we were all abed,—Mamsie and Phronsie and I in the bedroom, and the three boys in the loft,—and all of us fast asleep, suddenly the beautiful little man exclaimed, ‘I am quite tired out bowing to you!’ ‘And I am quite, quite exhausted courtesying to you all the time,’ declared the lovely lady.