g, and that
Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to
sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious tune that he called
"Sonny, my soul," Punch could not understand what Mamma meant. But he
strove to do his duty, for the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said to
Judy: "Ju, you bemember Mamma?"

"'Torse I do," said Judy.

"Then always bemember Mamma, 'r else I won't give you the paper ducks
that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me."

So Judy promised always to "bemember Mamma."

Many and many a time was Mamma's command laid upon Punch, and Papa
would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.

"You must make haste and learn to write, Punch," said Papa, "and then
you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay."

"I'll come into your room," said Punch, and Papa choked.

Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy
to task for not "bemembering," they choked. If Punch sprawled on the
sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in
purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth
for a kiss.

Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth:
Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and
Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and choking.

"Where," demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four
wheels with a mound of luggage atop--"where is our broom-gharri? This
thing talks so much that I can't talk. Where is our own broom-gharri?
When I was at Bandstand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib
why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, 'I
will give it you'--I like Inverarity Sahib--and I said, 'Can you put
your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows? And Inverarity
Sahib said No, and laughed. I can put my legs through the pully-wag
loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh,
Mamma's crying again! I did n't know. I was n't not to do so."

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler: the door
opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door
of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend "Downe Lodge."
Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavour. It
stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered
legs.

"Let us go away," said Punch. "This is not a pretty place."

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had quitted the cab, an