Squire's Scotch
Gardener to see our gardener, and when they were looking at the wall
fruit, Saxon used to come snuffing after us.

He is the nicest dog I know. He looks very savage, but he is only very
funny. His lower jaw sticks out, which makes him grin, and some people
think he is gnashing his teeth with rage. We think it looks as if he
were laughing--like Mother Hubbard's dog, when she brought home his
coffin, and he wasn't dead--but it really is only the shape of his
jaw. I loved Saxon the first day I saw him, and he likes me, and
licks my face. But what he likes best of all are Bath Oliver Biscuits.

One day the Scotch Gardener saw me feeding him, and he pulled his red
beard, and said "Ye do weel to mak hay while the sun shines, Saxon, my
man. There's sma' sight o' young leddies and sweet cakes at hame for
ye!" And Saxon grinned, and wagged his tail, and the Scotch Gardener
touched his hat to me, and took him away.

The Old Squire's Weeding Woman is our nursery-maid's aunt. She is not
very old, but she looks so, because she has lost her teeth, and is
bent nearly double. She wears a large hood, and carries a big basket,
which she puts down outside the nursery door when she comes to tea
with Bessy. If it is a fine afternoon, and we are gardening, she lets
us borrow the basket, and then we play at being weeding women in each
other's gardens.

She tells Bessy about the Old Squire. She says--"He do be a real old
skinflint, the Old Zquire a be!" But she thinks it--"zim as if 'twas
having ne'er a wife nor child for to keep the natur in 'un, so his
heart do zim to shrivel, like they walnuts Butler tells us of as a
zets down for desart. The Old Zquire he mostly eats ne'er a one now's
teeth be so bad. But a counts them every night when's desart's done.
And a keeps 'em till the karnels be mowldy, and a keeps 'em till they
be dry, and a keeps 'em till they be dust; and when the karnels is
dust, a cracks aal the lot of 'em when desart's done, zo's no one
mayn't have no good of they walnuts, since they be no good to he."

Arthur can imitate the Weeding Woman exactly, and he can imitate the
Scotch Gardener, too. Chris (that is Christopher, our youngest
brother), is very fond of "The Zquire and the Walnuts." He gets nuts,
or anything, like shells or bits of flower-pots, that will break, and
something to hit with, and when Arthur comes to "_The karnels is
dust_," Chris smashes everything before him, shouting, "_A cracks aal