all."

"Then ain't I a lucky little boy?" I asked. For hitherto it had been
Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.
That I could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less
happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until
eight or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding
piece of luck. Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which,
in my more riotous moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first
sign of a cold it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed
gruel and sup off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with
deliberate intent to deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as
taste is concerned, being wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was
another example of Fortune's favouritism: other little boys were so
astoundingly unlucky as to be left alone when they felt ill. If
further proof were needed to convince that I had been signalled out by
Providence as its especial protege, there remained always the
circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey for my nurse. The
suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of children was a
new departure.

The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct
it.

"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your
poor mother."

"Isn't mamma lucky?"

"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."