The last boy in the sketch, 6, need scarcely be particularized. Doctor’s boy; was a charity boy; stripes evidently added on to a pair of the doctor’s clothes of last year--Miss Clapperclaw pointed this out to me with a giggle.--Nothing escapes that old woman.
As we were walking in Kensington Gardens she pointed me out Mrs. Braggs nursery-maid, who sings so loud at church, engaged with a Life Guardsman, whom she was trying to convert probably. My virtuous friend rose indignant at the sight.
“That’s why these minxes like Kensington Gardens,” she cried. “Look at the woman: she leaves the baby on the grass, for the giant to trample upon; and that little wretch of a Hastings Bragg is riding on the monster’s cane.”
Miss C. flew up and seized the infant, waking it out of its sleep, and causing all the gardens to echo with its squalling. “I’ll teach you to be impudent to me,” she said to the nursery-maid, with whom my vivacious old friend, I suppose, has had a difference; and she would not release the infant until she had rung the bell of Bungalow Lodge, where she gave it up to the footman.
The giant in scarlet had slunk down toward Knightsbridge meanwhile. The big rogues are always crossing the Park and the Gardens, and hankering about Our Street.
It was before old Hunkington’s house that the mutes were standing, as I passed and saw this group at the door. The charity-boy with the hoop is the son of the jolly-looking mute; he admires his father, who admires himself too, in those bran-new, sables. The other infants are the spawn of the alleys about Our Street. Only the parson and the typhus fever visit those mysterious haunts, which lie couched about our splendid houses like Lazarus at the threshold of Dives.
Those little ones come crawling abroad in the sunshine, to the annoyance of the beadles, and the horror of a number of good people in the street. They will bring up the rear of the procession anon, when the grand omnibus with the feathers, and the fine coaches with the long-tailed black horses, and the gentlemen’s private carriages with the shutters up, pass along to Saint Waltheof’s.
You can hear the slow bell tolling clear in the sunshine already, mingling with the crowing of Punch, who is passing down the street with his show; and the two musics make a queer medley.