has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a
shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or
anywhere from the outside world.

The little lad stands in the passage demanding that I get up. "Get up,
lazybones!" he says. Pretty language to his elders! He speaks soberly,
halting on each syllable of the long and difficult word. He is so
solemn that the jest is doubled. And now he runs off, jouncing and
stiff-legged to his nursery. I hear him dragging his animals from his
ark, telling them all that they are lazybones, even his barking dog
and roaring lion. Noah, when he saw on that first morning that his ark
was grounded on Ararat, did not rouse his beasts so early to leave the
ship.

Later I meet the lad at breakfast, locked in his high chair. In these
riper hours of day there is less of Cobweb in his composition. He is
now every inch a boy. He raps his spoon upon his tray. He hurls food
in the general direction of his mouth. If an ear escape the assault it
is gunnery beyond the common. He is bibbed against misadventure. This
morning he yearns loudly for muffins, which he calls "bums." He
chooses those that are unusually brown with a smudge of the
cooking-tin, and these he calls "dirty bums."

Such is my nephew--a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb
in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind
and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but
this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is
common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk,
for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting
ran in gossip up the street, yet he lagged in locomotion. Previously
he advanced most surely on his seat--his slider, as he called
it--throwing out his legs and curling them in under so as to draw him
after. By this means he attained a fine speed upon a slippery floor,
but he chafed upon a carpet. His mother and I agreed that this was
quite an unusual method and that it presaged some rare talent for his
future, as the scorn of a rattle is said to predict a judge. It was
during one of these advances across the kitchen floor where the boards
are rough that an accident occurred. As he excitedly put it, with a
fitting gesture to the rear, he got a sliver in his slider. But now he
goes upon his feet with a waddle like a sailor, and he wags his slider
from side to side.

Sometimes we play at