Tales from Many Sources | Page 8

tugged with the other; he dragged a rosette over
his nose and got the frills into his eyes; he worried it as a puppy worries
your handkerchief if you tie it around its face and tell it to "look like a
grandmother." At last the strings gave way, and he cast it triumphantly
out of the clothes-basket which served him for cradle.
Successive efforts to induce him to wear it proved vain, so Thomasina
said the weather was warm and his hair was very thick, and she parted
this and brushed it, and Miss Kitty gave the cap to the farm-bailiff's
baby, who took to it as kindly as a dumpling to a pudding-cloth.
How the boy was ever kept inside his christening clothes, Thomasina
said she did not know. But when he got into the parson's arms he lay
quite quiet, which was a good omen. That he might lack no advantage,
Miss Betty stood godmother for him, and the parish clerk and the
sexton were his godfathers.
He was named John.
"A plain, sensible name," said Miss Betty. "And while we are about it,"
she added, "we may as well choose his surname. For a surname he must

have, and the sooner it is decided upon the better."
Miss Kitty had made a list of twenty-seven of her favourite Christian
names, which Miss Betty had sternly rejected, that everything might be
plain, practical, and respectable at the outset of the tramp-child's career.
For the same reason she refused to adopt Miss Kitty's suggestions for a
surname.
"It's so seldom there's a chance of choosing a surname for anybody,
sister," said Miss Kitty, "it seems a pity not to choose a pretty one."
"Sister Kitty," said Miss Betty, "don't be romantic. The boy is to be
brought up in that station of life for which one syllable is ample. I
should have called him Smith if that had not been Thomasina's name.
As it is, I propose to call him Broom. He was found under a bush of
broom, and it goes very well with John, and sounds plain and
respectable."
So Miss Betty bought a Bible, and on the flyleaf of it she wrote in her
fine, round, gentlewoman's writing--_"John Broom. With good wishes
for his welfare, temporal and eternal. From a sincere friend!"_ And
when the inscription was dry the Bible was wrapped in brown paper,
and put by in Thomasina's trunk till John Broom should come to years
of discretion.
He was slow to reach them, though in other respects he grew fast.
When he began to walk he would walk barefoot. To be out of doors
was his delight, but on the threshold of the house he always sat down
and discarded his shoes and stockings. Thomasina bastinadoed the
soles of his feet with the soles of his shoes "to teach him the use of
them," so she said. But Miss Kitty sighed, and thought of the lawyer's
prediction.
There was no blinking the fact that the child was as troublesome as he
was pretty. The very demon of mischief danced in his black eyes, and
seemed to possess his feet and fingers as if with quicksilver. And if, as
Thomasina said, you "never knew what he would be at next," you

might also be pretty sure that it would be something he ought to have
left undone.
John Broom early developed a taste for glass and crockery, and as the
china cupboard was in that part of the house to which he by social
standing also belonged, he had many chances to seize upon cups, jugs,
and dishes. If detected with any thing that he ought not to have had, it
was his custom to drop the forbidden toy and toddle off as fast as his
unpractised feet would carry him. The havoc which this caused
amongst the glass and china was bewildering in a household where
tea-sets and dinner-sets had passed from generation to generation,
where slapdash, giddy-pated kitchenmaids never came, where Miss
Betty washed the best teacups in the parlor, where Thomasina was
more careful than her mistress, and the breaking of a single plate was a
serious matter, and, if beyond rivetting, a misfortune.
Thomasina soon found that her charge was safest, as he was happiest,
out of doors. A very successful device was to shut him up in the drying
ground, and tell him to "pick the pretty flowers." John Broom preferred
flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered nosegays
of daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he would
present these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent eyes, for
many a smashed teacup.
But the tramp-baby's restless spirit was soon weary of the
drying-ground, and he set forth one morning in search of