CHAPTER TWO.

TELLS ALL ABOUT HIM.

"Pray, don't 'ee be angry wi' him, mum," said Jupp appealingly, as the
somewhat flustered female advanced towards the mite, laying hands on his
collar with apparently hostile intentions.

"I ain't a going to be angry," she replied a trifle crossly, as perhaps
was excusable under the circumstances, carrying out the while, however,
what had evidently been her original idea of giving the mite "a good
shaking," and thereby causing his small person to oscillate violently to
and fro as if he were crossing the Bay of Biscay in a Dutch trawler with
a choppy sea running. "I ain't angry to speak of; but he's that
tormenting sometimes as to drive a poor creature a'most out of her mind!
Didn't I tell 'ee," she continued, turning round abruptly to the object
of her wrath and administering an extra shake by way of calling him to
attention. "Didn't I tell 'ee as you weren't to go outdoors in all the
slop and slush--didn't I tell 'ee now?"

But in answer the mite only harked back to his old refrain.

"I want do d'an'ma," he said with stolid defiance, unmoved alike by his
shaking or the nurse's expostulation.

"There, that's jest it," cried she, addressing Jupp the porter again,
seeing that he was a fine handsome fellow and well-proportioned out of
the corner of her eye without looking at him directly, in that
unconscious and highly diplomatic way in which women folk are able to
reckon up each other on the sly and take mental stock of mankind.
"Ain't he aggravating? It's all that granma of his that spoils him; and
I wish she'd never come nigh the place! When Master Teddy doesn't see
her he's as good as gold, that he is, the little man!"

She then, with the natural inconsequence and variability of her sex,
immediately proceeded to hug and kiss the mite as affectionately as she
had been shaking and vituperating him the moment before, he putting up
with the new form of treatment as calmly and indifferently as he had
received the previous scolding.

"He's a fine little chap," said Jupp affably, conceiving a better
opinion of the nurse from her change of manner as well as from noticing,
now that her temporary excitement had evaporated, that she was a young
and comely woman with a very kindly face. "He told me as how he were
going to Lun'non."

"Did he now?" she exclaimed admiringly.

"He's the most owdacious young gen'leman as ever was, I think; for he's
capable, young as he is, not lon