My name is Robert Stuart Allonby.' And he would raise a pair of
wonderful brown eyes as he spoke, in anxious doubt as to whether his
name would be liked.

Bobby showed a good deal of anxiety about different things. His
favourite sentence was always, 'I wonder, Nurse ----' and very often,
noting the impatient frown on his nurse's face, he would stop there,
and turn away to his favourite corner in the window-seat, which he
shared with 'Nobbles,' the comfort of his life.

Bobby was a very small boy, but a big thinker, and he would have liked
to be a big talker, but grown-up people were not interested in what he
had to say. So he talked in a rapid undertone to 'Nobbles,' who always
understood, and who smiled perpetually into the earnest little face of
his master. 'Nobbles' had been given to him a very long time ago by a
sailor-brother of Nurse's, who came to tea at certain periods, and who
related the most wonderful stories of foreign parts. Jane, the
housemaid, always took tea in the nursery upon these occasions, and she
and Bobby listened with awed admiration to the handsome traveller.
'Nobbles' was only a walking-stick, with a wonderful little ivory head.
It was the head of a goblin, Nurse declared, but Bobby loved it.
Nobbles had very round eyes and a smiling mouth, two very big ears, and
a little red cap on his head. Bobby took him to bed with him every
night; he went out walks with him; he always had him with him in his
window corner; and it was Nobbles who was treated to all the delicious
secrets and plans which only a very lonely little boy could have
concocted.

Bobby's nursery was at the top of the house; he reached it by the back
stairs, and had to open a wooden gate at the top of them before he
could get to it. There were two rooms, one leading out of the other,
and both looked out at the back of the house. Bobby spent hours by the
window, and he knew every inch of the landscape outside.

First there was a paved yard with a high wall on one side, with a green
door in it, through which you passed into a walled kitchen garden.
This door was kept locked in fruit time; the gardener, old Tom, kept
one key, and Bobby's grandmother the other.

Old Tom was generally working in the kitchen garden, and Bobby watched
him from his window with keen interested eyes. Beyond this garden was
an orchard which ran down to the high-road. Bobby could not see this
road from his window, for a tall row of elms hid it fro