le and told him that A B meant ab.

"Why?" said Punch. "A is a and B is bee. Why does A B mean ab?"

"Because I tell you it does," said Aunty Rosa "and you've got to say
it."

Punch said it accordingly, and for a month, hugely against his will,
stumbled through the brown book, not in the least comprehending what
it meant. But Uncle Harry, who walked much and generally alone, was
wont to come into the nursery and suggest to Aunty Rosa that Punch
should walk with him. He seldom spoke, but he showed Punch all
Rocklington, from the mud-banks and the sand of the back-bay to the
great harbours where ships lay at anchor, and the dockyards where the
hammers were never still, and the marine-store shops, and the shiny
brass counters in the Offices where Uncle Harry went once every three
months with a slip of blue paper and received sovereigns in exchange;
for he held a wound-pension. Punch heard, too, from his lips the story
of the battle of Navarino, where the sailors of the Fleet, for three
days afterward, were deaf as posts and could only sign to each other.
"That was because of the noise of the guns," said Uncle Harry, "and I
have got the wadding of a bullet somewhere inside me now."

Punch regarded him with curiosity. He had not the least idea what
wadding was, and his notion of a bullet was a dockyard cannon-ball
bigger than his own head. How could Uncle Harry keep a cannon-ball
inside him? He was ashamed to ask, for fear Uncle Harry might be
angry.

Punch had never known what anger--real anger--meant until one terrible
day when Harry had taken his paint-box to paint a boat with, and Punch
had protested with a loud and lamentable voice. Then Uncle Harry had
appeared on the scene and, muttering something about "strangers'
children," had with a stick smitten the black-haired boy across the
shoulders till he wept and yelled, and Aunty Rosa came in and abused
Uncle Harry for cruelty to his own flesh and blood, and Punch
shuddered to the tips of his shoes. "It was n't my fault," he
explained to the boy, but both Harry and Aunty Rosa said that it was,
and that Punch had told tales, and for a week there were no more walks
with Uncle Harry.

But that week brought a great joy to Punch.

He had repeated till he was thrice weary the statement that "the Cat
lay on the Mat and the Rat came in."

"Now I can truly read," said Punch, "and now I will never read
anything in the world."

He put the brown book in the cupboard where