“It seems very hard to lock him up,” said Bertie, with increasing sympathy; “and I think you ought to obey him and go. I will see if I can find the baby. Where do you live?”
She pointed vaguely over the copses and pastures: “Go on a mile, and you’ll see Jim Bracken’s cottage; but, Lord love you! you’ll ne’er manage baby.”
“I will try,” said Bertie, sweetly. His fancy as well as his charity was stirred; for he had never, that he knew of, seen a baby. “But indeed you should go to school.”
“I’m a-going,” said the groaning and blowsy heroine with a last sob, and then she set off running as quickly as a pair of her father’s boots, ten times too large, allowed her, her slate and her books making a loud clatter as she struggled on her way.
He was by this time very tired, for he was not used to such long walks; but curiosity and compassion put fresh spirit into his heart, and his small legs pegged valorously over the rough ground, the red stockings and the silver buckles becoming by this time much begrimed with mud.
He knocked at one cottage door, and saw only a very cross old woman, who flourished a broom at him.
“No, it bean’t Jim Bracken’s. Get you gone!—you look like a runaway.”
Now, a runaway he was; and, as truth when we are guilty is always even as a two-edged sword, Bertie colored up to the roots of his hair, and bolted off as fast as he could to the only other cottage visible, beyond a few acres of mangel-wurzel and all the lucern family, which the little Earl fancied were shamrocks. For he was far on in Euclid, could speak German well, and could spell through Tacitus fairly, but about the flowers of the field and the grasses no one had ever thought it worth while to tell him anything at all. Indeed, to tell you the truth, I do not think his tutors knew anything about them themselves.
This other cottage was so low, so covered up in its broken thatch, which in turn was covered with lichen, and was so tumble-down and sorrowful-looking, that Bertie thought it was a ruined cow-shed. However, it stood where the school-girl had pointed: so he took his courage in both hands, as we say in French, and advanced to it. The rickety door stood open, and he saw a low miserable bed with a miserable woman lying on it; a shock-headed boy sprawled on the floor, another crouched before a fire of brambles and sods, and between the legs of this last boy was a strange, uncouth, shapeless object, which, but for the fact that it was crying loudly, never would have appeared to his astonished eyes as the baby for whom was prophesied a tragic and early end by the kettle. The boy who had this object in charge stared with two little round eyes.