'Baby at the head, armed _cap-a-pie_, I suppose,' smiled the mother,
dancing in her arms her youngest son, a little fellow of about two years
old; but she soon set him down in her lap again, for she had been ill,
and was still so weak that the least effort tired her.

'Mamma, I think you'd better let me ring for nurse to take Georgie, and
then you can lie upon your sofa again and have a nap; and I'll go and
ask my brothers to play in the rough ground, where you won't hear their
noise,' said thoughtful Willie.

The mother assented to all these proposals; but when, after ringing the
bell, the boy turned to go, she beckoned him back to her side. 'Tell my
darling Johnnie that I hope he'll come and sit with me this afternoon;
only he must be wise and quiet, and not get into one of his harum-scarum
moods, or papa won't let me have him.'

Willie nodded sagaciously. 'I'll keep guard over him, mamma, so that he
shall behave like a mouse all dinner-time, and then papa won't be afraid
to trust him. Now let me give Georgie one kiss.' His mother watched him
fondly as he caressed the little brother, whose baby mind took small
cognizance of such affectionate demonstrations, and then, drawing his
curly head down to her, she gave him a true mother's kiss, and
whispered, 'Mamma's own good boy.' Willie tripped lightly down the
stairs and into the garden, where three little boys, of the respective
ages of eight, six, and five, were playing at the well-known game which
Charles Dickens terms 'an invasion of the imaginary domains of Mr.
Thomas Tytler.'

'Here, Duncan, Seymour, Archie, I want you to come into the "desert"
with me and have a game there. Mamma's going to take a nap before
dinner, and she won't be able to sleep while you make this row under her
window. Come along, there's good fellows.' The two little ones left off
picking up gold and silver directly, and Duncan descended from the rank
of a landed proprietor with great good-humour;--not that Mr. Thomas
Tytler's domains were the only ground belonging to him: he had a neat
little flower-plot in one corner of the garden, as had all the elder
brothers except Johnnie, who had been deprived of his by his father for
having neglected to cultivate it, and who from that day forward had been
known in the family by the soubriquet of 'Jean-sans-terre,' otherwise
'Lackland.' Willie led the way out of the garden into a rough piece of
ground covered with weeds and stones, and called by the ch