ght here till ye
find yer pen,' and they just sat there on their hunkers talkin' about
the crops and the like o' that, until he signed it; which he did very
bad-mannered, and flung it back at them and says he: 'There now, bad
cess to yez, small good it'll do yez, for I'm the King,' says he,
'an' I'll do as I blame please, so I will. The King can do no wrong,'
says he. 'Well, then,' says one of them, foldin' up the Magna Charta
and puttin' it away careful in his breast pocket, 'the King can't
break his word, I guess,' and wid that he winks at the rest of them,
and they says, says they: 'That's one on you, yer Majesty!' But they
couldn't put him in good humour, and they do say, Ma, that when the
company was gone that that man cut up somethin' rough, cursed and
swore, and chewed up sticks, and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog,
and sure, the very next day, when he was driving through a place
called 'The Wash,' drunk as an owl, he dropped his crown, and his
little satchel wid all his good clothes in it, and him being the way
he was he never heard them splash. When he missed them he felt awful,
and went back to hunt for them, puddlin' round in his bare feet for
hours, and some say he had et too many lampreys, whatever that is,
for his breakfast, but anyway, he got a cowld in his head and he
died, so he did."

"Wasn't that a bad state for the poor man to die in, childer dear,"
said Mrs. Watson, wishing to give Pearl's story a moral value; "and
him full of wickedness and cursin'!"

"And lampwicks, too, Ma!" Bugsey added.

"Where he wuz now?" asked Danny, who had a theological bent.

"Faith, now, that's not an easy thing to say for certain," said the
father gravely. "Things look pretty bad for him, I'm thinkin'."

After some discussion as to John's present address, Pearlie summed it
up with a fine blending of charity and orthodoxy by saying: "Well, we
just hope he's gone to the place where we're afraid he isn't."

The days passed fleet-footed with the Watson family--days full of
healthy and happy endeavour, with plenty to eat, clothes to wear, Ma
at home, and everybody getting a chance to be somebody. Pearl was the
happiest little girl in the world. Every night she brought home
faithfully what she had learned at school, at least the interesting
part of it, and when the day's work had been dull and abstract, out
of the wealth of her imagination she proceeded to make it
interesting.

Under Pearl's sympathetic telling o