ted
loading of it up.

It lasted long enough, for all that, to give quite a turn to Mrs.
Tapping, whom you may remember as a witness of Dave's accident--the bad
one--nine months ago. Ever since then--if Mrs. Riley, to whom she
addressed her remarks, would believe her--Mrs. Tapping's heart had been
in her mouth whenever she had lighted her eye on young children
a-playing in the gutters. As children were plentiful, and preferred
playing wherever the chances of being run over seemed greatest, this
must have been a tax on Mrs. Tapping's constitution. She had, however,
borne up wonderfully, showing no sign of loss of flesh; nor could her
flowing hair have been thinned--to judge by the tubular curls that
flanked her brows, which were neither blinkers nor cornucopias
precisely; but which, opened like a scroll, would have resembled the
one; and, spirally prolonged, the other. It was the careful culture of
these which distracted the nose of Mrs. Tapping's _monde_, preoccupied
by a flavour of chandled tallow, to a halo of pomatum. Mrs. Riley was
also unchanged; she, however, had no alarming cardiac symptoms to
record.

But as to that turn Dave Wardle giv' Mrs. Tapping. It really sent your
flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see a child fly up in the
air like that. So she testified, embellishing her other physiological
experience with a new horror unknown to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less
impressionable, kept an even mind in view of the natural invulnerability
of childhood and the special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If
these two between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight
from disaster, what could? The unbiassed observer--if he had been
passing at the time--might have thought that Dave's chubby but vigorous
handgrip and his legs curled tight round the truck-handle were the
immediate and visible reasons why he was not shot across the truck into
space. Anyhow, he held on quite tight, shouting loudly the next item of
the programme--"Now all the other boys to jump out when oy comes to
free. One, two, _free_!" In view of the risk of broken bones the other
boys were prompt, and Dave came down triumphantly. Mrs. Riley's
confidence had been well founded.

"Ye'll always be too thinder-harruted about the young spalpeens, me
dyurr," she said. "Thrust them to kape their skins safe! Was not me son
Phalim all as bad or wurruss. And now to say his family of childher!"

Mrs. Tapping perceived her opportunity