“To be sure! we were all children once. Ah! me!
“Oh, no! I don’t mind the child, my little cup-bearer,” and the old woman drew her wizen face into a hundred wrinkles, and began selecting a large quantity of fruits, vegetables and herbs, far more than she could carry.
“Is it far you have to go?” said the mother.
Crimson Tuft.
“No, no! not far,” replied the woman.
So the mother called Paul to help her. He was very reluctant to go; but, when the mother kissed him, and promised to make him a beautiful ball, and cover it with red morocco, he came forward and took the basket readily.
“And I,” said the old woman, “will give him a beautiful crimson tuft; he will be gay as a lark, my little cup-bearer.”
This seemed delightful to Paul, and he followed after the old woman, thinking—“I can play soldier with the crimson tuft, and the professor in the next house will hear me, and call me Charlemagne. It will be glorious to be the soldier with the crimson tuft.”
Little Paul walked on in quite a lordly way, with his great martial thoughts echoing in all the chambers of his boyish heart, “It will be glorious—the soldier of the crimson tuft!”