“Dear, dear!” he said, getting regularly maudlin, and kissing me at about two a second.
“Let go, do you hear? you’re scrugging me.”
“Nice mannie,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do until I luckily thought of my grub.
“Like a bun?” said I.
He let me go and was down beside me like a shot. You should have seen him walk into that bun! His face was all over it, and the crumbs were about an inch deep all over the place. When he got near the end of bun Number 1, he looked up as near choking as they make them, and said—
“I like buns awfully.”
“All right, have another,” said I. You see as his governor was going to meet him in town, it didn’t matter much to me if he got gripes at night. Anything to keep him quiet.
After the third bun he was about full up, and said he was thirsty. I couldn’t make the young ass understand that I had no water in the carriage. He kept on saying he was thirsty for half an hour, till we came to a station. I had made up my mind I would get into another carriage at the first stop we came to; but, somehow, it seemed rather low to leave the kid in the lurch. So I bought him a glass of milk instead, which set him up again. Nobody else got in the carriage—knew better—and off we went again.
He’d got an awful lot to say for himself; about dicky-birds and puff-puffs, and dogs, and trouser-pockets and rot of that sort, and didn’t seem to care much whether I listened or no. Then, just when I thought he had about run dry and was getting sleepy, he rounded on me with—