FullReads

TINY.

“Oh Toby, my dear old Toby, you portly and princely Pug!

“You know it’s bad for you to lie in the fender:–Father says that’s what makes you so fat–and I want you to come and sit with me on the Kurdistan rug.

“Put your lovely black nose in my lap, and I’ll count your great velvet wrinkles, and comfort you with kisses.

“If you’ll only keep out of the fender–Father says you’ll have a fit if you don’t!–and give good advice to your poor Little Missis.

“Father says you are the wisest creature he knows, and you are but eight years old, and three months ago I was six.

“And yet mother says I’m the silliest little girl that she ever met with, because I am always picking up tricks.

“She does not know where I learnt to stand on one leg (unless it was from a goose), but it has made one of my shoulders stick out more than the other.

“It wasn’t the goose who taught me to whistle up and down stairs. I learnt that last holidays from my brother.

“The baker’s man taught me to put my tongue in my cheek when I’m writing copies, for I saw him do it when he was receipting a bill.

“And I learn’t to wrinkle my forehead, and squeeze up my eyes, and make faces with my lips by imitating the strange doctor who attended us when we were ill.

“It was Brother Jack himself who showed me that the way to squint is to look at both sides of your nose.

“And then, Toby–would you believe it?–he turned round last holidays and said–‘Look here, Tiny, if the wind changes when you’re making that face it’ll stay there, and remember you can’t squint properly and keep your eye on the weathercock at the same time to see how it blows.’

“But boys are so mean!–and I catch stammering from his school friend–‘Tut-tut-tut-tut-Tom,’ as we call him–but I soon leave it off when he goes.

“I did not learn stooping and poking out my chin from any one; it came of itself. It is so hard to sit up; but mother says that much my worst trick.

“Is biting my finger nails; and I’ve bitten them nearly all down to the quick.

“She says if I don’t lose these tricks, and leave off learning fresh ones, I shall never grow up like our pretty great-great-grandmamma.

“Do you know her, dear Toby? I don’t think you do. I don’t think you ever look at pictures, intelligent as you are!

“It’s the big portrait, by Romney, of a beautiful lady, sitting beautifully up, with her beautiful hands lying in her lap.

“Looking over her shoulder, out of lovely eyes, with a sweet smile on her lips, in the old brocade Mother keeps in the chest, and a pretty lace cap.

“I should very much like to be like her when I grow up to that age; Mother says she was twenty-six.

“And of course I know she would not have looked so nice in her picture if she’d squinted, and wrinkled her forehead, and had one shoulder out, and her tongue in her cheek, and a round back, and her chin poked, and her fingers all swollen with biting;–but, oh, Toby, you clever Pug! how am I to get rid of my tricks?

“That is, if I must give them up; but it seems so hard to get into disgrace.

“For doing what comes natural to one, with one’s own eyes and legs, and fingers, and face.”

TOBY.

“Remove your arms from my neck, Little Missis–I feel unusually apoplectic–and let me take two or three turns on the rug.

“Whilst I turn the matter over in my mind, for never was there so puzzled a pug!

“I am, as your respected Father truly observes, a most talented creature.

“And as to fit subjects for family portraits and personal appearance–from the top of my massive brow to the tip of my curly tail, I believe myself to be perfect in every feature.