Well, I went home in my new waistcoat as fine as a peacock; and when I gave the bottle-screw to my father, begging him to take it as a token of my affection for him, my dear mother burst into such a fit of tears as I never saw, and kissed and hugged me fit to smother me. “Bless him, bless him,” says she, “to think of his old father. And where did you purchase it, Bob?”—“Why, mother,” says I, “I purchased it out of my savings” (which was as true as the gospel).—When I said this, mother looked round to father, smiling, although she had tears in her eyes, and she took his hand, and with her other hand drew me to her. “Is he not a noble boy?” says she to my father: “and only nine years old!”—“Faith,” says my father, “he IS a good lad, Susan. Thank thee, my boy: and here is a crown-piece in return for thy bottle-screw—it shall open us a bottle of the very best too,” says my father. And he kept his word. I always was fond of good wine (though never, from a motive of proper self-denial, having any in my cellar); and, by Jupiter! on this night I had my little skinful,—for there was no stinting,—so pleased were my dear parents with the bottle-screw. The best of it was, it only cost me threepence originally, which a chap could not pay me.
Seeing this game was such a good one, I became very generous towards my parents; and a capital way it is to encourage liberality in children. I gave mamma a very neat brass thimble, and she gave me a half-guinea piece. Then I gave her a very pretty needle-book, which I made myself with an ace of spades from a new pack of cards we had, and I got Sally, our maid, to cover it with a bit of pink satin her mistress had given her; and I made the leaves of the book, which I vandyked very nicely, out of a piece of flannel I had had round my neck for a sore throat. It smelt a little of hartshorn, but it was a beautiful needle-book; and mamma was so delighted with it, that she went into town and bought me a gold-laced hat. Then I bought papa a pretty china tobacco-stopper: but I am sorry to say of my dear father that he was not so generous as my mamma or myself, for he only burst out laughing, and did not give me so much as a half-crown piece, which was the least I expected from him. “I shan't give you anything, Bob, this time,” says he; “and I wish, my boy, you would not make any more such presents,—for, really, they are too expensive.” Expensive indeed! I hate meanness,—even in a father.
I must tell you about the silver-edged waistcoat which Bunting gave me. Mamma asked me about it, and I told her the truth,—that it was a present from one of the boys for my kindness to him. Well, what does she do but writes back to Dr. Swishtail, when I went to school, thanking him for his attention to her dear son, and sending a shilling to the good and grateful little boy who had given me the waistcoat!
“What waistcoat is it,” says the Doctor to me, “and who gave it to you?”
“Bunting gave it me, sir,” says I.
“Call Bunting!” and up the little ungrateful chap came. Would you believe it, he burst into tears,—told that the waistcoat had been given him by his mother, and that he had been forced to give it for a debt to Copper-Merchant, as the nasty little blackguard called me? He then said how, for three-halfpence, he had been compelled to pay me three shillings (the sneak! as if he had been OBLIGED to borrow the three-halfpence!)—how all the other boys had been swindled (swindled!) by me in like manner,—and how, with only twelve shillings, I had managed to scrape together four guineas. . . . .
My courage almost fails me as I describe the shameful scene that followed. The boys were called in, my own little account-book was dragged out of my cupboard, to prove how much I had received from each, and every farthing of my money was paid back to them. The tyrant took the thirty shillings that my dear parents had given me, and said he should put them into the poor-box at church; and, after having made a long discourse to the boys about meanness and usury, he said, “Take off your coat, Mr. Stubbs, and restore Bunting his waistcoat.” I did, and stood without coat and waistcoat in the midst of the nasty grinning boys. I was going to put on my coat,—
“Stop!” says he. “TAKE DOWN HIS BREECHES!”
Ruthless, brutal villain! Sam Hopkins, the biggest boy, took them down—horsed me—and I WAS FLOGGED, SIR: yes, flogged! O revenge! I, Robert Stubbs, who had done nothing but what was right, was brutally flogged at ten years of age!—Though February was the shortest month, I remembered it long.