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of worsted, and held it up as if for me to see. Then she took off her glasses with the left hand in the stocking, and shaking her head she exclaimed:
"Oh, you bad boy; wasn't it enough for your father to go mad after his botaniky, and want to go collecting furren buttercups and daisies, to break your mother's heart, that you must ketch his complaint and want to go too?"
"My father isn't mad," I said.
"Your father was mad," retorted Nurse Brown, "and I was surprised at him. What did he ever get by going wandering about collecting his dry orchardses and rubbish, and sending of 'em to England?"
"Fame," I cried, "and honour."
"Fame and honour never bought potatoes," said nurse.
"Why, four different plants were named after him."
"Oh, stuff and rubbish, boy! What's the good of that when a man gets lost and starves to death in the furren wilds!"
"My father was too clever a man to get lost or to starve in the wilds," I said proudly. "The savages have made him a prisoner, and I'm going to find him and bring him back."
"Ah! you've gone wandering about with that dirty black till you've quite got into his ways."
"Jimmy isn't dirty," I said; "and he can't help being black any more than you can being white."
"I wonder at a well-brought-up young gent like you bemeaning yourself to associate with such a low creature, Master Joseph."
"Jimmy's a native gentleman, nurse," I said.
"Gentleman, indeed!" cried the old lady, "as goes about without a bit of decent clothes to his back."
"So did Adam, nursey," I said laughing.
"Master Joseph, I won't sit here and listen to you if you talk like that," cried the old lady; "a-comparing that black savage to Adam! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. It all comes of living in this horrible place. I wish we were back at Putney."
"Hang Putney!" I cried. "Putney, indeed! where you couldn't go half a yard off a road without trespassing. Oh, nurse, you can't understand it," I cri