nurse!" or "Here comes your nurse to fetch you!" He is overwhelmed with
shame at the thought of the other boys' scorn. She is not _his_
nurse, she is his brother's. He could find his way home well enough, but
how can he explain to the other boys that his parents will not trust him
with the little one yet, and so send for them both at the same time! Now
there shall be an end to it; he will not go to the King's Gardens with
the nurse again.

It is the housemaid, once more, come to ask if he will not beg pardon
now. In vain. Everything has been tried with him, scolding, and even a
box on the ear; but he has not been humbled. Now he stands here; he will
not give in.

But this time his kind mother has not let the girl come empty-handed.
His meal is passed through the bars and he eats it. It is so much the
easier to hold out. And some hours later he is brought down and put to
bed without having apologised.

Before I had so painfully become aware of the ignominy of going with the
maid to the King's Gardens, I had been exceedingly fond of the place.
What gardens they were for hide and seek, and puss in the corner! What
splendid alleys for playing Paradise, with Heaven and Hell! To say
nothing of playing at horses! A long piece of tape was passed over and
under the shoulders of two playfellows, and you drove them with a tight
rein and a whip in your hand. And if it were fun in the old days when I
only had tape for reins, it was ever so much greater fun now that I had
had a present from my father of splendid broad reins of striped wool,
with bells, that you could hear from far enough when the pair came
tearing down the wide avenues.