England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction
He flung himself into his new clothes and was already half-dressed when
Blessington returned.
"Oh, Blessington," he said, "look at me, and they're just as easy to
manage as the old ones, and may I go to see Harry after breakfast and
show him?"
"Master Harry will be here for tea," said Blessington.
"Yes, but I want him to know sooner than that. Did they come just
ordinarily, like other clothes? Or are they a birthday present?"
"Well, I should say they were a birthday present," said Blessington.
"Who from?" demanded Archie.
And then suddenly he guessed.
"Oh, Blessington," he said. "I like them better than anything!" he said.
"Well, dear, and I wish you health to wear them and strength to tear
them," she said. "Eh, but how you're disarranging my cap!"
Archie promptly handselled his clothes by spilling egg on the coat, and
bread-and-butter upside down on the trousers, and, when the time came
for him to make his public entry into the world, was seized with a
sudden fit of shyness at the thought of anybody seeing him. The
housemaid would stare, and William would laugh, and Marjorie would
pretend not to know him, and for the moment of leaving the day-nursery
(which from this morning was to be known as Archie's sitting-room) he
would almost have wished himself back in his knickerbockers. But the
remembered rough touch of the serge on his legs provided encouragement,
and soon the new glories burst upon a sympathetic and not a mocking
world. They were at breakfast downstairs, and Archie, though he had
already had his, was bidden by his father to have a cup of coffee, which
he poured out himself at the side-table, and to drink it slowly, and at
the bottom of it, among the melted sugar, there came to his astonished
eyes the gleam of silver, and there was a new half-crown with his
father's happy returns. Thereafter came a hurried visit to Harry, a
motor drive with his mother and Jeannie, Archie sitting on the box-seat
and permitted to blow the bugle practically as often as he wanted, and
the return to dinner, to find that the two things he liked best, namely
boiled rabbit and spotted dog pudding, formed that memorable repast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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