“That I will, my little gentleman,” said David, “if I know the game.”

“Oh, I don’t care what it is, so that it is fun.  What is your name?”

“David Dodd.”

“Oh.”

“And what is yours?”

“What, don’t—­you—­know???  Why, Reginald George Bazalgette.  I am seven.  I am the eldest.  I am to have more money than the others when papa dies, Jane says.  I wonder when he will die.”

“When he does you will lose his love, and that is worth more than his money; so you take my advice and love him dearly while you have got him.”

“Oh, I like papa very well.  He is good-natured all day long.  Mamma is so ill-tempered till dinner, and then they won’t let me dine with her; and then, as soon as mamma has begun to be good-tempered upstairs in the drawing-room, my bedtime comes directly; it’s abominable!!” The last word rose into a squeak under his sense of wrong.

David smiled kindly:  “So it seems we all have our troubles,” said he.

“What! have you any troubles?” and Reginald opened his eyes in wonder.  He thought size was an armor against care.

“Not so many as most folk, thank God, but I have some,” and David sighed.

“Why, if I was as big as you, I’d have no troubles.  I’d beat everybody that troubled me, and I would marry Lucy directly”; and at that beloved name my lord falls into a reverie ten seconds long.

David gave a start, and an ejaculation rose to his lips.  He looked down with comical horror upon the little chubby imp who had divined his thought.

Mr. Reginald soon undeceived him.  “She is to be my wife, you know.  Don’t you think she will make a capital one?” Before David could decide this point for him, the kaleidoscopic mind of the terrible infant had taken another turn.  “Come into the stable-yard; I’ll show you Tom,” cried young master, enthusiastically.  Finally, David had to make the boy a kite.  When made it took two hours for the paste to dry; and as every ten minutes spent in waiting seemed an hour to one of Mr. Reginald’s kidney, as the English classics phrase it, he was almost in a state of frenzy at last, and flew his new kite with yells.  But after a bit he missed a familiar incident; “It doesn’t tumble down; my other kites all tumble down.”

“More shame for them,” said David, with a dash of contempt, and explained to him that tumbling down is a flaw in a kite, just as foundering at sea is a vile habit in a ship, and that each of these descents, however picturesque to childhood’s eye, implies a construction originally derective, or some little subsequent mismanagement.  It appeared by Reginald’s retort that when his kite tumbled he had the tumultuous joy of flying it again, but, by its keeping the air like this, monotony reigned; so he now proposed that his new friend should fasten the string to the pump-handle, and play at ball with him beneath the kite.  The good-natured sailor consented, and thus the little voluptuary secured a terrestrial and ever-varying excitement, while occasional glances upward soothed him with the mild consciousness that there was his property still hovering in the empyrean; amid all which, poor love-sick David was seized with a desire to hear the name of her he loved, and her praise, even from these small lips.  “So you are very fond of Miss Lucy?” said he.