don't come to houses where _good folks live_."

"I wish they would," said Peter, thoughtfully, "I want to see one."

"What does he say?" asked the great-grandmother. The nurse repeated
Peter's audacious remark; whereupon Madam Melcombe said briskly and
sharply, "Hold your tongue, child, and eat your bread and milk like a
Christian; you're spilling it on the floor."

"But I wish they would," repeated Peter softly; and finishing his bread
and milk, he said his grace; and his fishing-rod being near at hand, he
leaned his elbows on the balustrade, threw his line, and began to play
at his favourite game.

"I think," he said, presently turning to his aunt, "I think, aunt, I
shall call the garden the 'field of the cloth of gold;' it's so covered
with marigolds just now that it looks quite yellow. Henry's tent shall
be the arbour, and I'll have the French king's down in this corner."

On hearing this, his mother slightly elevated her eyebrows, she had no
notion what he was alluding to; but his grandmother, who seemed to have
been made rather restless and uneasy by his remarks about ghosts,
evidently regarded this talk as something more of the same sort, and
said to her granddaughter, "I wish, Laura, you wouldn't let him read
such a quantity of fairy tales and heathenish nonsense--'field o' the
cloth o' gold, indeed!' Who ever heard of such a thing!"

"He has only been reading the 'History of England,' grandmother," said
Peter's aunt.