ery sagacious manner. "I can tell exactly how much time it takes going
by the public coach to London, and it sleeps only one night on the
road."

"Sleeps!" cried uncle David. "What! it puts on a night-cap, and goes to
bed?"

"Yes! and it dines and breakfasts too, Mr. uncle David, for I heard Mrs.
Crabtree say so."

"Never name anybody, unless you wish to see her immediately," said Major
Graham, hearing a well-known tap at the door. "As sure as you mention an
absent person, if he is supposed to be fifty miles off at the time, it
is rather odd, but he instantly appears!"

"Then there is somebody that I shall speak about very often."

"Who can this Mr. Somebody be?" asked uncle David, smiling. "A foolish
person that spoils you both I dare say, and gives you large slices of
bread and jelly like this. Hold them carefully! Now, good bye, and joy
be with you."

But it was with rather rueful faces that Harry and Laura left the room,
wishing they might have remained another hour to talk nonsense with
uncle David, and dreading to think what new scrapes and difficulties
they would get into in the nursery, which always seemed to them a place
of torture and imprisonment.

Major Graham used to say that Mrs. Crabtree should always have a
thermometer in her own room when she dressed, to tell her whether the
weather was hot or cold, for she seemed to feel no difference, and
scarcely ever made any change in her own attire, wearing always the same
pink gown and scarlet shawl, which made her look like a large red
flower-pot, while she was no more annoyed with the heat than a
flower-pot would have been. On this very oppressive morning she took as
much pains in suffocating Harry with a silk handkerchief round his neck,
as if it had been Christmas, and though Laura begged hard for leave to
go without one of her half-a-dozen wrappings, she might as well have
asked permission to go without her head, as Mrs. Crabtree seemed
perfectly deaf upon the subject.

"This day is so very cold and so very shivering," said Harry, slyly,
"that I suppose you will make Laura wear at least fifty shawls."

"Not above twenty," answered Mrs. Crabtree, dryly. "Give me no more of
your nonsense, Master Harry! This is no business of yours! I was in the
world long before you were born, and must know best; so hold your
tongue. None but fools and beggars need ever be cold."

At last Mrs. Crabtree had heaped as many clothes upon her two little
victims, as she