‘What are you doing, Tom?’ she cried. Janet following stood transfixed with her eyes widening every moment—half with wonder, half with envy. What she would have given to paint the staff and herself in imitation of Tom!
‘It’s the colours of the bordure,’ said the boy. ‘I’m doing it for Beau.’
‘The colours of what?’ Lady Car was as ignorant of heraldry as Tom himself.
‘Have we got a bordure? and what’s our colours? and I want to know what are the arms, mother. I mean my arms: for I suppose,’ he said, pausing in his work to look at her, ‘yours are just Beau’s now?’
‘What does the boy mean?’ said Carry. ‘Janet, you must not go too near him; you will spoil your frock. Tom, your jacket will never be fit to be seen again.’
‘I don’t care for my jacket. Mother, look here. Beau’s going to put up a flag for you like the Queen, and I’m doing the stick. But I want to know about my own shield, and my colours; and if I’ve got a bordure, and if we’re in quarters, or what. I want to know about the flag at the Towers.’
Lady Car made a step backward as if she had received a blow. ‘There was no flag at the Towers—I mean there were no arms upon it.—There were no—who put such nonsense into your head, Tom?’
‘It’s not nonsense. Beau told me—he’s going to give me a lesson how to do it. He knows all about it. He says it’s no use asking nurse or Harrison major whose father is in trade. It’s only gentlemen that have this sort of thing. Mother, have I got a bordure?’
‘Mozer,’ said little Janet, ‘please buy him a bordure.’
Poor Carry was not fond of any allusion to her former home. She was glad to laugh at the little girl’s petition—though with a tremor that was half hysterical. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she said. ‘I will buy him anything that he wants, that is good for him, but oh, dear, what a mess he is in! Your lines are not straight, and you are all over paint. Jan, come away from that painted boy.’