“And will you really pay the sixpence?” asked the little fellow presently. “They won’t let me get on for less.”
“Really and truly, Joe. I’ll take you for a row in a boat some calm day, if mamma will allow you to go.”
Joe looked grave. “I don’t much like the water, please,” said he, timidly. “Alfred Dale went on it in a boat and fell in, and was nearly drowned. He comes to mamma’s school.”
“Then we’ll let the boats alone, Joe. There’s Punch! He is going to set himself up yonder: wouldn’t you like to run and see him?”
“But I might miss the donkeys,” answered Joe.
He stood by me quietly, gazing in the direction taken by the donkeys; evidently they were his primary attraction. The other child, Mary, who was a baby when her father died (poor Baked Pie, as we boys used to call him at Frost’s), was in Wales with Mrs. Blair’s people. They had taken the child for a few months, until she saw whether she should get along at Saltwater.
But we thought she would get along. Her school was a morning school for little boys of good parentage, all of whom paid liberal terms; and she would be able to let her best rooms for at least six months in the year.
“There’s Matilda! Oh, there’s Matilda!”
It was quite a loud shout for little Joe. Looking up, I saw him rush to a rather good-looking young woman, neatly dressed in a black-and-white print gown and small shawl of the same, with black ribbons crossed on her straw bonnet. Servants did not dress fine enough to set the Thames on fire in those days. Joe dragged her triumphantly up to me. She was one of the housemaids at No. 7.