That Stick ...

p. 209It amounted to a trial of strength between aunt and nurse.  Michael submitted once or twice, when told that his mamma would not approve, but the lobster struck him with extreme amazement and admiration, and he could not believe but that the red, long-whiskered monster was not as good as he was beautiful.

‘He has got a glove like what Peter wears to cut the holly hedge,’ exclaimed the boy, to the general amusement.  ‘Where’s his hand?’

‘My Mite shall have a bit of his funny hand,’ said Mrs. Morton, and Ida was dealing with the claw, when Eden interposed and said she did not think her ladyship would wish Master Michael to have any.

‘Just a taste, nurse, with some of the cream,’ said Mrs. Morton.  ‘Here, Mitey dear.’

‘No, Master Michael, mamma would say no,’ said Eden.

‘Really, Eden, you might let Mrs. Morton judge in her own house,’ said Ida.

‘Master Morton is under my charge, ma’am, and I am responsible for him,’ said Eden, respectfully but firmly.  But Ida held out the claw, and Michael made a dart at it.

Eden again said ‘No,’ but he looked up at her with an exulting roguish grin, and clasped it, whereupon she laid hold of him by the waist, and bore him off, kicking and roaring, amid the pitiful and indignant exclamations of his aunt and cousin.

It may be that the faithful Eden was somewhat wanting in tact, by her determined attention to the routine that chafed her hosts; but she had been p. 210forced to come away without directions, and could only hold fast to the discipline of her well-ordered nursery under all obstacles.

Master Michael was to have his cup of milk and run on the beach with the nursery-maid long before the usual awakening of the easy-going household, which regarded late hours as belonging to gentility; then, after the general breakfast, his small lessons, over which there often was a battle, first, because he felt injured by not doing them with his mother, and next, because his hostesses regarded them as a hardship, and taught him to cry over ‘Reading without tears,’ besides detaining him as late as they could over the breakfast, or proposing to take him out at once, without waiting for that quarter of an hour’s work.  Or when out-of-doors, they would not bring him home for the siesta, on which his nurse insisted, though it was often only lying down in the dark; nor had Mrs. Morton any scruple in breaking it, if she wanted to exhibit him to her friends, though if it were interrupted or omitted, the child’s temper was the worse all the afternoon.

‘That nurse is a thorough tyrant over the poor little darling, and a very impertinent woman besides,’ said Mrs. Morton.

‘A regular little spoiled brat,’ Ida declared him.

While certainly the worse his father was said to be, the more his aunt tried to spoil and indulge him, as a relief to her pity and grief.

He had missed his home and parents a good deal at first, had cried at his lessons, and cried more at not having father to carry him to the nursery, nor mother to hear him say his prayers and kiss him at p. 211night; but time wore off the association, and he was full of delight at the sea, the ships, the little crabs, and all the other charms of the shore.

Above all, he was excited about the little boys.  His own kind had never come in his way before, his chief playfellow being Amice, who was so much older as to play with him condescendingly and always give way to him.  There was a large family in a neighbouring lodging containing what he respectfully called ‘big knicker-bocker boys,’ who excited his intense admiration, and drew him like a magnet.

For once Mrs. Morton and Eden were agreed as to the propriety of the companionship, since Rollstone had pronounced them of ‘high family,’ and the governess who was in charge of them was quite ready to be interested in the solitary little stranger, even if he had not been the Honourable Michael.  So was the elder girl of the party, but, unluckily, Michael was just of the age to be a great nuisance to children who played combined and imaginative games which he could not yet understand.

When they were making elaborate approaches to a sand fortification, erected with great care and pains, he would dash on it with a coup de main, break it down at once with his spade, and stand proudly laughing and mixing up the ruins together, heedless of the howls of anger of the besiegers, and believing that he had done the right thing.

And once, when a wrathful boy of eight had shaken the troublesome urchin as he would have done his own junior, had this last presumed to stir up his clear pool of curiosities, most of the female portion of the family had taken the part of the p. 212intruder, and cried shame on any one who could hurt or molest a poor dear little boy away from a father who was so ill!

Thus the Lincoln family, for the sake of peace and self-defence, used sedulously to flee at the approach of Mite, and seek for secluded coves to which he was not likely to penetrate.