Children of the Dear CotswoldsHarker, L. Allen (Lizzie Allen)
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Children of the Dear Cotswolds
Harker, L. Allen (Lizzie Allen)
Cotswold Hills (England) -- Fiction
"God help me for a drunken beast! and I can’t carry him for my arm’s
broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy.
The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he
could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by
various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender
little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you
till you woked up."
The Bookie looked at Fuzzy and tried to speak, but somehow he couldn’t.
Fuzzy was on his feet in a moment and held out his grubby hands: "Shall
I pull you up? I can pull dad up."
The Bookie took one of the little hands and carried it to his lips,
saying brokenly, "Why do you love me, Fuzzy? I’m not worth it."
Fuzzy took no notice of this remark, it was just one of those foolish
and irrelevant things that grown-up people have a habit of saying, so he
said, "Aren’t you tired of sitting in the road? Hadn’t we better go
home? I’m very hungry."
The Bookie tried again to get up on to his feet, but something had gone
wrong with his leg, as well as his arm, and after a few excruciating
efforts he gave it up.
"I’m afraid it’s no go, Fuzzy, I can’t walk; you see I was pitched out
of the dog-cart, and I’m all smashed up—whatever is to be done?"
"Shall you be very lonely if I go home and tell them?" asked Fuzzy with
his arms round the Bookie’s neck, "and then they could bring a carriage
for you; you’re too big to go in my mail cart, or I’d lend it to you.
It’s in a field wiv Nana."
"How on earth I got into this lane I can’t think, it’s right off the
high road. O Fuzzy Wuzzy, what an ass I’ve been!" The Bookie groaned,
and Fuzzy clasped his arms tighter round his neck. Then he wiped his
friend’s dirty face with the crumpled smock, remarking: "Your poor face
is so grubby, and you’ve lost your hat!"
"Where’s yours?" asked the Bookie.
"I think it felled into the ditch!" Fuzzy answered composedly, "but
there’s no sun to sun-stroke us."
"You must be got home, old chap; it’s getting ever so late and they will
be anxious; do you think you could go by yourself, and tell them where
you left me?"—"a pretty tale, truly," thought the Bookie to himself.
Fuzzy was torn by conflicting desires. He hated to leave his wounded
friend, and he wanted his mother. Finally, having embraced the Bookie
several times, he trotted off down the lane and into the high road once
more. When he got home it was nearly eight o’clock. His father and
mother, white-faced and anxious, were standing at the drive gate,
straining their eyes in the twilight. Nana, having searched vainly
herself, had only just come back to confess that Fuzzy was lost. He
hardly waited to receive his mother’s caresses, but seizing her by the
hand, dragged her down the road, crying excitedly: "Come quick! the
Bookie’s hurted and he’s all alone."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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