The nurse had got the oil in a silver medicine-spoon, so contrived, that if you could get it into the child’s mouth the medicine must go down. Limby, however, took care that no spoon should go into his mouth; and, when the nurse tried the experiment for the nineteenth time, he gave a plunge and a kick, and sent the spoon up to the ceiling, knocked off nurse’s spectacles, upset the table on which all the bottles and glasses were, and came down whack on the floor.
His mother picked him up, clasped him to her breast, and almost smothered him with kisses. “Oh! my dear boy,” said she, “it shan’t take the nasty oil—it won’t take it, the darling;—naughty nurse to hurt baby: it shall not take nasty physic;” and then she kissed him again.
Poor Limby, although only two years old, knew what he was at—he was trying to get the mastery of his mamma; he felt that he had gained his point, and gave another kick and a squall, at the same time planting a blow on his mother’s eye.
“Dear little creature,” said she, “he is in a state of high convulsions and fever—he will never recover!”
But Limby did recover, and in a few days was running about the house, and the master of it; there was nobody to be considered, nobody to be consulted, nobody to be attended to, but Limby Lumpy.
Limby grew up big and strong; he had everything his own way. One day, when he was at dinner with his father and mother, perched upon an arm chair, with his silver knife and fork, and silver mug to drink from, he amused himself by playing drums on his plate with the mug.
“Don’t make that noise, Limby, my dear,” said his father. “Dear little lamb,” said his mother, “let him amuse himself. Limby have some pudding?”
“No; Limby no pudding—drum! drum! drum!”
A piece of pudding was, however, put on Limby’s plate, but he kept on drumming as before. At last he drummed the bottom of the mug into the soft pudding, to which it stuck, and by which means it was scattered all over the carpet.
“Limby, my darling!” said his mother; and the servant was called to wipe Limby’s mug, and pick the pudding up from the floor. Limby would not have his mug wiped, and floundered about, and upset the castors and the mustard on the table-cloth.