“Saturday, dear, perhaps.”
“Daddy said we might have tea in the woods.”
“Boys who put pepper on the cat’s nose don’t deserve picnics.”
Master Jack giggled over the originality of the crime. “Old Tom did sneeze!”
“You was velly cruel, Jack,” and Gwen’s face reproved him round her mother’s skirts.
“Little girls don’t know nuffin.”
“I can spell ‘fuchsia,’ I can.”
“What’s the use of spelling! Any one can spell—can’t they, mother?”
“No, dear,” and the mother laughed; “many people are not as far advanced as Gwen.”
They were within twenty yards of the great house in Lombard Street, with its warm red walls and its white window frames, when a crowd of small boys came scattering round the northeast corner of St. Antonia’s Square. In the middle of the road a butcher had stopped his cart, and several people were loitering by the railings under the elms, watching something that was as yet invisible to Catherine and the children.