nor did I object to his using his bat like a scoop; but when he lay down
in front of the wicket, and sweetly smiled as the ball touched his
stomach, I had to insist on severe cricketing etiquette. As the nights
darkened in I took to amusing myself more and more with Teddy, and
sometimes I did not go out to the Chequers at all. The boy was a severe
trial to me when he learned to play draughts. When once the fundamental
laws of the game dawned on his mind, and he understood that he must try
to reduce the number of my pieces, he thought that any means were
justified if he could be successful. Once I left the room for a minute
while we were playing, and on my return found four of my men had
disappeared. I said, "Where are those men?" Teddy smiled courteously; "I
taken 'em. I go hop, hop, hop, over a lot. All fair." "But where have
you put them?" "In a pocket. All fair." But he gradually grew out of his
habits of picking and stealing, and he behaved much like a well-trained
dog. It is plain to me that he regarded me as a sort of deity; but his
love was quite unalloyed by fear. He would stroke my beard, and say,
"You very nice," when I had been specially good-humoured, and, as his
stock of words increased, he prattled on by the hour. One must love
something, and I got into the habit of loving this pale little urchin,
so that at length I fitted up a crib for him, and asked his mother to
let him stay with me. This made a great change in my habits. Teddy
seemed to wake as by magic, if I rose to go out after he was in bed,
and, although he never cried, his way of saying, "You won't let me stop
by myself--perhaps the black man might come," always settled me. By
degrees I fell into the habit of reading at nights, and the steady life
made my brain clear. Books that had been dim memories to me for years
became vivid, and the power of sustained thinking came back. In those
long, calm evenings, I went through my Gibbon again, and the awful
pageant that rolls past our view under the direction of the aristocrat
of literature made my late life seem poor and mean. How low we were! The
darkened costers are interesting as studies in animal life; but the more
pretentious persons whose humour reaches its highest flight in an
indecent story, and whose wit consists in calling someone else a
liar--how petty they are, and how fruitless is their friendship! I began
to feel like a patrician who surveys the mob from his lordly dais, and I
almost reso