nd ten months he was that square and
compact, that chunky and yet that tender, that no right-minded person
could desire him to be changed to an impudent young scaramouch like
young Michael Ragstroar four doors higher up, who was eleven and a
regular handful.

His name was Dave Wardle, after his father; and his sister's Dorothea,
after her mother. Both names appeared on a tombstone in the parish
churchyard, and you might have thought they was anybody, said Public
Opinion; which showed that Dave and his sister were orphans. Both had
recollections of their father, but the funeral he indulged in three
years since had elbowed other memories out of court. Of their mother
they only knew by hearsay, as Dave was only three years old when his
sister committed matricide, quite unconsciously, and you could hear her
all the way up the Court. Pardon the story's way of introducing
attestations to some fact of interest or importance in the language in
which its compiler has received it.

They were good children to do with, said their Aunt M'riar, so long as
you kep' an eye. And a good job they were, because who was to do her
work if she was every minute prancing round after a couple of young
monkeys? This was a strained way of indicating the case; but there can
be no doubt of its substantial truth. So Aunt M'riar felt at rest so
long as Dave was content to set up atop of the dustbin-lid and shout
till he was hoarse; all the while using a shovel, that was public
property, as a gong.

Perhaps Dave took his sister Dolly into his confidence about the nature
of the trust he conceived himself to hold in connection with this
dustbin. To others of the inhabitants he was reticent, merely referring
to an emolument he was entitled to. "The man on the lid," he said, "has
a farden." He said this with such conviction that few had the heart to
deny the justice of the claim outright, resorting to subterfuges to
evade a cash settlement. One had left his change on the piano; another
was looking forward to an early liquidation of small liabilities on the
return of his ship to port; another would see about it next time Sunday
come of a Friday, and so on. But only his Uncle Moses ever gave him an
actual farthing, and Dave deposited it in a cat on the mantelshelf, who
was hollow by nature, and provided by art with a slot in the dorsal
vertebrae. It could be shook out if you wanted it, and Dave occasionally
took it out of deposit in connection with a cour