use or a hive
for usurers, something rankly useful. All thy delights are under notice
to quit. The Noah's arks are packed one within another, with clockwork
horses harnessed to them; the soldiers, knapsack on back, are kissing
their hands to the dear foolish girls, who, however, will not be left
behind them; all the four-footed things gather around the elephant, who
is overful of drawing-room furniture; the birds flutter their wings; the
man with the scythe mows his way through the crowd; the balloons tug
at their strings; the ships rock under a swell of sail, everything is
getting ready for the mighty exodus into the Strand. Tears will be shed.

So we bought the horse in the Lowther Arcade, Porthos, who thought it
was for him, looking proud but uneasy, and it was sent to the bandbox
house anonymously. About a week afterward I had the ill-luck to meet
Mary's a husband in Kensington, so I asked him what he had called his
little girl.

"It is a boy," he replied, with intolerable good-humour, "we call him
David."

And then with a singular lack of taste he wanted the name of my boy.

I flicked my glove. "Timothy," said I.

I saw a suppressed smile on his face, and said hotly that Timothy was as
good a name as David. "I like it," he assured me, and expressed a hope
that they would become friends. I boiled to say that I really could not
allow Timothy to mix with boys of the David class, but I refrained, and
listened coldly while he told me what David did when you said his toes
were pigs going to market or returning from it, I forget which. He
also boasted of David's weight (a subject about which we are uncommonly
touchy at the club), as if children were for throwing forth for a wager.

But no more about Timothy. Gradually this vexed me. I felt what a
forlorn little chap Timothy was, with no one to say a word for him, and
I became his champion and hinted something about teething, but withdrew
it when it seemed too surprising, and tried to get on to safer ground,
such as bibs and general intelligence, but the painter fellow was so
willing to let me have my say, and knew so much more about babies than
is fitting for men to know, that I paled before him and wondered why the
deuce he was listening to me so attentively.

You may remember a story he had told me about some anonymous friend.
"His latest," said he now, "is to send David a rocking-horse!"

I must say I could see no reason for his mirth. "Picture it," said he,
"