THE PHILATELIST.
This was the day appointed, after considerable discussion, for our visit to London, and at an early hour Frederick and I were ready for the journey. Frederick, who is tending slowly, as it seems to me, towards an as yet sufficiently remote ninth birthday, had been vigorously and successfully scrubbed till he shone with an unwonted absence of grime; his hair had been temporarily battened down; his Eton collar was speckless, and his knickerbocker suit, while not aggressively new, was appropriate and free from visible rents. I cannot say he was impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, but he was eager and fully determined to purchase as many stamps as could be secured for the generous prize of money bestowed upon him by a lady who had observed his progress in the study of Nature—beetles, moths, tadpoles and the like—and had noted his ever-growing passion for postage-stamps.
London he looked upon as one gigantic repository of stamps. I spoke to him of Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Column and the Landseer Lions. He replied by informing me that there was a certain issue of Mauritius which was valued at £1,200. "If," he said, "I could get that some day I shouldn't want to collect any more."
"It seems," I said, "a lot of money to pay for a small piece of paper."
"Yes," he agreed, "it is; but perhaps I could get it cheap in some old shop which didn't know much about it."
I then tried to divert his attention to the prospect of having luncheon with me at the Rhadamanthus Club, but he begged me not to interrupt him, as he was endeavouring to calculate how many years it would take him to get together the sum if he could manage to save two-pence a week out of his pocket-money. After a short mental struggle, however, he gave it up and banished the blue Mauritius, or whatever it is, from his ambitions and his conversation.
Before we started Francesca addressed a few earnest words to me about the proper care of a boy in London.
"Be sure," she said, "to see that he keeps his hands clean. I should hate to think that he was wandering about Piccadilly and Pall Mall with dirty hands."
"He'll have to wander," I said, "with such hands as Nature provides for him. No little boy can ever keep his hands clean anywhere for more than half a minute at a stretch."
"But you might give him an occasional wash, you know."