small one painted red within and green outside was discovered
in Bourg-la-Reine, and I was happy ever afterwards.

Much of my time was spent with the children and nurses of the
family which occupied the chateau. The costume of the head
nurse with her high Normandy cap (would that I had a female
pen for details) invariably suggested to me that she would
make any English showman's fortune, if he could only exhibit
her stuffed. At the cottage they called her 'La Grosse
Normande.' Not knowing her by any other name, I always so
addressed her. She was not very quick-witted, but I think
she a little resented my familiarity, and retaliated by
comparisons between her compatriots and mine, always in a
tone derogatory to the latter. She informed me as a matter
of history, patent to all nurses, that the English race were
notoriously bow-legged; and that this was due to the vicious
practice of allowing children to use their legs before the
gristle had become bone. Being of an inquiring turn of mind,
I listened with awe to this physiological revelation, and
with chastened and depressed spirits made a mental note of
our national calamity. Privately I fancied that the mottled
and spasmodic legs of Achille - whom she carried in her arms
- or at least so much of the infant Pelides' legs as were not
enveloped in a napkin, gave every promise of refuting her
generalisation.

One of my amusements was to set brick traps for small birds.
At Holkham in the winter time, by baiting with a few grains
of corn, I and my brothers used, in this way, to capture
robins, hedge-sparrows, and tits. Not far from the chateau