Just now the cook came up, bringing Arthur's breakfast on a tray. It looked very nice: milk-toast, and baked apples, and poached eggs, and a cup of nice cocoa. It was wonderful what good things Ralph used to cook, in that little bit of a camp stove, out of doors. Ralph had lived in the family as long as Flora, and loved poor Arthur just as well as she did. It was into the area in front of the basement that Arthur had fallen when he got his terrible hurt; and Ralph had picked him up and carried him upstairs in his arms, thinking all the way that he was dead. Ralph often said that he'd never forget that time,--not if he should live to be a thousand years old! He often told the story to people they met on their journeys. Everybody took an interest in poor Arthur, and wanted to know how he came to be so lame; but nobody liked to ask his father or mother: so they would ask Flora or Ralph. Ralph was an Englishman, and he had a very queer pronunciation of all words beginning with _h_. He dropped the _h_'s off such words, and he put them on to other words; which made his sentences sound very queer indeed. "It was just about height o'clock," he would say, "an' I'd just in my 'and the 'ot water for the master's shaving; an' Thomas 'ee was a takin' hof it out o' my 'and, when we 'ears such a screech, such a screech, and the missus she come a flyin' hover the stairs,--I'm blessed hif 'er feet so much as lighted hon 'em,--an' she screeching screechin', an' 'ollerin'; an' the same minute I 'ears a noise to the front o' the 'ouse, an' a perliceman a knockin' at the airy door, an' the missus she got to't fust; an' if it wan't a meracle wat was it, for 'er to 'ave come down two flights o' 'igh stairs in less time than I could 'urry across the 'all? An' I takes Master Harthur out o' the perliceman's 'ands; an' 'is little 'ead a 'anging down 's if 't 'a' been snapped off. Oh! if it seemed one minute afore I got 'im hup to the nursery it seemed a 'undred years; an' the missus she was never 'erself again,--not till she died. She allers said as 'ow she'd killed 'im 'erself. You see 'ee was all alone with 'er in 'er bedroom, an' she never noticed that 'ee 'ad gone to the window. She was never 'erself again,--never: she'd sit an' look at 'im, an' look at 'im, an' the tears'd run down 'er face faster'n rain. But she couldn't 'old a candle to this missus, in no respects: not to my way o' thinkin'. It's a 'ard thing to say of 'er, bein' she's dead; but it's my 'onest opinion that she's better in 'eaven than hearth, an' all parties better suited."