nxious about it, and was always practicing it at home. After
much hard work Edy used to wither me with:

"_That's_ not right!"

Teddy was of a more flattering disposition, but very obstinate when he
chose. I remember "wrastling" with him for hours over a little Blake
poem which he had learned by heart, to say to his mother:

"When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise,
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,
Till morning appears in the skies.

No, no, let us play, for yet it is day,
And we cannot go to sleep.
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep...."

All went well until the last line. Then he came to a stop.

_Nothing_ would make him say sheep!

With a face beaming with anxiety to please, looking adorable, he would
offer any word but the right one.

"And the hills are all covered with--"

"With what, Teddy?"

"Master Teddy don't know."

"Something white, Teddy."

"Snow?"

"No, no--does snow rhyme with 'sleep'?"

"Paper?"

"No, no. Now, I am not going to the theater until you say the right
word. What are the hills covered with?"

"People."

"Teddy, you're a very naughty boy."

At this point he was put in the corner. His first suggestion when he
came out was:

"Grass? Trees?"

"Are grass or trees white?" said the despairing mother with her eye on
the clock, which warned her that, after all, she would have to go to the
theater without winning.

Meanwhile, Edy was murmuring: "_Sheep_, Teddy," in a loud aside, but
Teddy would _not_ say it, not even when both he and I burst into tears!

At Hampton Court the two children, dressed in blue and white check
pinafores, their hair closely cropped--the little boy fat and fair (at
this time he bore a remarkable resemblance to Laurence's portrait of the
youthful King of Rome), the little girl thin and dark--ran as wild as
though the desert had been their playground instead of the gardens of
this old palace of kings! They were always ready to show visitors (not
so numerous then as now) the sights; prattled freely to them of "my
mamma," who was acting in London, and showed them the new trees which
they had assisted the gardeners to plant in the wild gar