The precise text of my grandmother's address I forget, but the nature of her harangue is unforgettable. She addressed me as might a magistrate a refractory subject about to be discharged from a reformatory. I was exhorted not to be bold, or bad, or saucy, to say my prayers, to tell the truth, not to thieve (oh! that damson-jam and those coppers), not to get caught again by the police; I was warned that I might drop dead in one of my violent fits of rage, and then I would surely go to hell; was adjured to learn my lessons, to respect my superiors, to break none of the Commandments, to avoid the seven deadly sins, learn the Catechism by heart, with the alternative of having my hair cut short and being sent to the poorhouse. She then held out her yellow hand, and placed a sparkling sovereign in my small palm.
"Don't lose it. There are twenty shillings in it, and in each shilling twelve pennies. Good-bye, and don't forget all I've said."
She shook my hand in her loose gentlemanly fashion, as if I were a young man going to college instead of a baby girl of seven about to be expatriated alone among strangers, in an alien land, for no conceivable reason but the singular caprice of her who had given me so ill a gift as life. It was the last time I saw my grandmother. I heard soon of her death with complete indifference.
"Polly was a jolly Japanese," sang my uncle cheerily, as he caught me up in his arms, and carried me down to the cab, on which Dennis had placed my trunk. Mary Ann was weeping on the steps. She handed me a bag of gingerbread and two apples, and told me I was not to be "down."
"'Tis yourself that's worth all the English that ever was born," she asserted, and I dolorously assured her that whatever happened, even if the Queen came in person to hang me, I would keep "up."
"That's me hearty," roared Dennis, holding the cab-door. "In with you, and do something for your living."
Uncle Lionel lifted me in, gave me a crown-piece, and to my astonishment kissed both my cheeks without hurting me. He stood on the pavement, handsome, smiling, and elegant, as the cab drove off with solitary, bewildered little me as surely a waif as any orphan. And waving his hand, he turned unconcerned on his heel.