I planted beans in the fond hope
that they would tower to the skies and take me with them. I became--in
fancy--Lord Mayor of London, and Mrs. Bundle shared my civic throne
and dignities, and we gave Rubens six beefeaters and a barge to wait
upon his pleasure.
Life, in short, was utterly changed for me. I grew strong, and stout,
and well, and happy. And I loved Nurse Bundle.
CHAPTER III
THE DARK LADY--TROUBLE IMPENDING--BEAUTIFUL, GOLDEN MAMMA
So two years passed away. Nurse Bundle was still with me. With her I
"did lessons" after a fashion. I learned to read, I had many of the
Psalms and a good deal of poetry--sacred and secular--by heart. In an
old-fashioned, but slow and thorough manner, I acquired the first
outlines of geography, arithmetic, etc., and what Mrs. Bundle taught
me I repeated to Rubens. But I don't think he ever learned the
"capital towns of Europe," though we studied them together under the
same oak tree.
We had a happy two years of it together under the Bundle dynasty, and
then trouble came.
I was never fond of demonstrative affection from strangers. The ladies
who lavish kisses and flattery upon one's youthful head after eating
papa's good dinner--keeping a sharp protective eye on their own silk
dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl
into one eye with a kid-gloved finger--I held in unfeigned abhorrence.
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