John Broom early developed a taste for glass and crockery, and as the
china cupboard was in that part of the house to which he by social
standing also belonged, he had many chances to seize upon cups, jugs,
and dishes. If detected with any thing that he ought not to have had, it
was his custom to drop the forbidden toy and toddle off as fast as his
unpractised feet would carry him. The havoc which this caused amongst
the glass and china was bewildering in a household where tea-sets and
dinner-sets had passed from generation to generation, where slapdash,
giddy-pated kitchenmaids never came, where Miss Betty washed the best
teacups in the parlor, where Thomasina was more careful than her
mistress, and the breaking of a single plate was a serious matter, and,
if beyond rivetting, a misfortune.
Thomasina soon found that her charge was safest, as he was happiest, out
of doors. A very successful device was to shut him up in the drying
ground, and tell him to "pick the pretty flowers." John Broom preferred
flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered nosegays of
daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he would present
these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent eyes, for many a
smashed teacup.
But the tramp-baby's restless spirit was soon weary of the
drying-ground, and he set forth one morning in search of "fresh woods
and pastures new.
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