air-cushions, and were too tired and cross to make it up again; Pip
had hit Bunty over the head for no ostensible reason, and received
two kicks in return; Judy's head ached, and the noise, was not calculated
to cure it; Meg had grown weary of staring out into the moving darkness,
and wondering whether Alan would notice she was never on the river-boat
now; and the poor little General was filling the hot air with
expostulations, in the shape of loud roars, at the irregularities of
the treatment he was undergoing.

Esther had taken his day clothes off, and made a picture of him in
a cream flannel nightgown and a pink wool jacket. And for half an
hour, he had submitted good-temperedly to being handed about and
tickled and half-smothered with kisses. He had eyen permitted Nell to
bite his little pink toes severally, and say a surprising amount of
nonsense about little pigs that went to market and did similarly
absurd things.

He had hardly remonstrated when there had been a dispute about the
possession of his person, and Bunty had clung to his head and body
while Nell pulled vigorously at his legs.

But after a time, when Esther made him a little bed on one of the
seats and tried to lay him down upon it, a sense of his grievances
came over him.

He had a swinging cot at home; with little gold bars at the foot to
blink at--he could not see why he should be mulcted of it, and made to
put up with a rug three times doubled. He was accustomed, too, to a
shaded light, a quiet room, and a warning H'sh! h'sh! whenever
people forgot themselves sufficiently to make the slightest noise.