t about the horse.

At last the hour of departure arrived, when he was to go with the
pony-carriage that fetched the Consul from town at three o'clock. The
two children both clung to his mother's skirt when she followed him out.

"Good-bye, Nikolai!" and she patted him in such a way on the cheek and
head that he looked at her half doubtingly, "and give my respects to
Holman and Mrs. Holman. Do you hear? Whatever you do, don't forget Mrs.
Holman. And--I declare you're kicking the varnish now! You must sit
quite still, Nikolai, the whole way. Don't you know that you mustn't
come near those fine carriage-cushions with your boots? You should just
see how nicely Ludvig and Lizzie sit, when they go for a drive--don't
you, dears?"

And off he set.

It had indeed been a gala day, and he had been given a large, sugared
twist to take with him, and it tasted delicious; but somehow or other he
began to cry all at once on the way home.

The next day he had full confirmation of how delightful it had been.

While he was going up and down the pavement in his daily occupation of
taking care of Silla, he caught fragments of Mrs. Holman's remarks to
the housekeeper up stairs, as they stood under the archway; he never for
a moment lost sight of her tall figure.

"You may well say so, Miss Damm. Take him into the room with their own
children; there aren't many grand folks that would have done such an
honour to one like him." ... "We must do so many things in this world,
Miss Damm--we must scour the boards over the gutter, so to speak, and
put up with them--and I don't mind saying that he showed that he was
well cared-for from top to toe." ... "Such an honour! It might have been
some respectable child they had asked there. He ought to remember it the
whole of his life!" ... "So grand as she is now, she doesn't much care
about coming out here and acknowledging the boy. It's nothing for those
that can pay to get rid of their shame!"

Nikolai crushed with all his might an old decapitated cock's head, which
lay in the gutter, with the heel of his boot, until it was as flat as a
penny.

When the terror of bogies and the devil in the coal-cellar had lost its
power, one of Mrs. Holman's most powerful means of keeping Nikolai in
order was a threat of sending him to the parish school--an institution
which stood before her imagination as a publicly authorised house of
correction for youth, and a daily training-ground in the fulfilment of
on