ding weeks: warmth and food, and Mrs. Evans'
nursing powers combined, caused one of those curious rallies not
uncommon in cases of consumption, though no one who saw the boy's thin,
flushed cheeks, and brilliant eyes, could think the reprieve would be a
long one. Still for the present there was improvement, and Lawrence
could not help feeling glad that he might keep for a little while longer
the child whose love had strangely brightened his lonely lodgings.

And while Wikkey's development was being carried on in the highest
direction, his education in minor matters was progressing under Mrs.
Evans' tuition--tuition of much the same kind as she had bestowed years
before on Master Lawrence and her sweet Master Robin. By degrees Wikkey
became thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of the toilette, and other
amenities of civilized life, and being a sharp child, with a natural
turn for imitation, he was, at the end of a week or two, not entirely
unlike those young gentlemen in his ways, especially when his
conversation became shorn of the expletives which had at first adorned
it, but which, under Mrs. Evans' sharp rebukes, and Lawrence's graver
admonitions that they were displeasing to the King, fast disappeared.
Wikkey's remorse on being betrayed into the utterance of some
comparatively harmless expression, quite as deep as when one slipped
that gave even Lawrence a shock, showed how little their meaning had to
do with their use.

One evening Lawrence, returning home to find Wikkey established as usual
on the sofa near the fire, was greeted by the eager question--

"Lawrence, what was the King like? I've been a thinking of it all day,
and I _should_ like to know. Do you think He was a bit like you?"

"Not at all," Lawrence answered. "We don't know exactly what He was
like; but--let me see," he went on, considering, "I think I have a
picture somewhere--I had one;" and he crossed the room to a corner
where, between the book-case and the wall, were put away a number of old
pictures, brought from the "boys' room" at home, and never yet re-hung;
among them was a little Oxford frame containing a photograph of the
Thorn-crowned Head by Guido. How well he remembered its being given to
him on his birthday by his mother! This he showed to Wikkey, explaining
that though no one knows certainly what the King is like, it is thought
that He may have resembled that picture. The boy looked at it for some
time in silence, and then said--