The monkey certainly looked in the best of spirits, as he put out his hands for biscuits, and nuts, and all the good things we had brought for him, and then scampered away and hid them behind his warm bed of hay, to be devoured after we had gone.
We then went on to visit a hutch of ten rabbits, of all colors and breeds, and for whom we had brought a good supply of cabbage leaves, and two young pigs in the cleanest pig-sty I have ever seen, and a tame squirrel with a broken leg, which Bagot had found dying in the wood, and had brought home to be nursed.
"That child is to go free as soon as he's well enough," said the boy; "he has just come to the hospital for a bit, poor thing! He's like me now, he can't walk!"
Then we turned into the garden, and went into an aviary, opening out of one of the hothouses, where were no less than twenty canaries, and here there was much to be done to supply them all with fresh water and sufficient seed. Some of them were so tame that they flew on the carriage, and took hemp seeds out of Master Reggie's mouth.
Our last visit was to a pet lamb, in a field in front of the house, and for this child, I fetched a bucket of milk from the farm.
"Now you've seen sixty-one of my children," said the little boy; "there are eight more in the house; they had their breakfast before you came. There is a little green parrot, an old pussy-cat and a kitten, four little dormice (it was one of them that died), and my little dog Sandy. Haven't I a great many children?"
He seemed very tired now, and soon his nurse came to carry him in. But before she took him away, he threw his arms round my neck, and said, "Peter, dear Peter, don't forget to come for me to-morrow."
He was so thin and light that the nurse carried him upstairs as if he were a little baby.
"Do you think he will ever live to grow up?" I said to Bagot, when I went back to help him in the garden; "he looks so very ill and white and thin."
"God knows," said Bagot, with tears in his eyes; "God knows, Peter. That's all we can say about it, God knows. And, perhaps, Peter," he said with a sigh, as he stooped to pull up a weed, "perhaps it's just as well that we don't know."