"Yes, sir. There's Love Lane."
"Get out with you, Cobbs!"—that was that there boy's expression,—"you're joking."
"Begging your pardon, sir, there really is Love Lane; and a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."
"Norah, dear," says Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs."
Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Well, sir, I turned the conversation as well as I could, and I took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in a half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her,—but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.
I don't know, sir,—perhaps you do,—why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself, to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake. But Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, after all, that's where it is! Don't you see, sir?
Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to me, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's, temper was on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he "teased her so"; and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"
A billed fowl and baked bread-and-butter pudding brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but I could have wished, I must privately own to you, sir, to have seen her more sensible of the voice of love, and less abandoning of herself to the currants in the pudding. However, Master Harry, he kep' up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk, and begun to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.
About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers says to our missis: "We are much indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma'am, where is my boy?" Our missis says: "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty!" Then Mr. Walmers, he says: "Ah, Cobbs! I am glad to see you. I understood you was here!" And I says: "Yes, sir. Your most obedient, sir."
"I beg your pardon, sir," I adds, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you credit and honor." And Boots signifies to me, that if the fine boy's father had contradicted him in the state of mind in which he then was, he thinks he should have "fetched him a crack," and took the consequences.