Then Nurse Bundle on this subject hardly exercised her usual
discretion in withholding me from servants' gossip, and servants'
gossip from me. Her own indignation was strongly aroused, and I had no
difficulty in connecting her tearful embraces, and her allusions to my
dead mother, with the misfortune we all believed to be impending.
[Illustration: The lank lawyer wagged my hand of a morning, and said,
"And how is Miss Eliza's little beau?"]
At first I had admired Miss Burton's bouncing looks. Then my head had
been turned to some extent by her flattery, and by the establishment
of that most objectionable of domestic jokes, the parody of love
affairs in connection with children. Miss Burton called me her little
sweetheart, and sent me messages, and vowed that I was quite a little
man of the world, and then was sure that I was a desperate flirt. The
lank lawyer wagged my hand of a morning, and said, "And how is
Miss Eliza's little beau?" And I laughed, and looked important,
and talked rather louder, and escaped as often as I could from the
nursery, and endeavoured to act up to the character assigned me with
about as much grace as AEsop's donkey trying to dance.
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