‘’Torse I do,’ said Judy.

‘Then always bemember Mamma, ’r else I won’t give you the paper ducks that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me.’

So Judy promised always to ‘bemember Mamma.’

Many and many a time was Mamma’s command laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.

‘You must make haste and learn to write, Punch,’ said Papa, ‘and then you’ll be able to write letters to us in Bombay.’

‘I’ll come into your room,’ said Punch, and Papa choked.

Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy to task for not ‘bemembering,’ they choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth for a kiss.

Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth—Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and choking.

‘Where,’ demanded Punch, wearied of a loath-some contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atop—‘where is our broom-gharri? This thing talks so much that I can’t talk. Where is our own broom- gharri? When I was at Band-stand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, ‘‘I will give it you”—I like Inverarity Sahib—and I said, ‘‘Can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows?” And Inverarity Sahib said No, and laughed. I can put my legs through the pully-wag loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh, Mamma’s crying again! I didn’t know I wasn’t not to do so.’

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler: the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend ‘Downe Lodge.’ Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavour. It stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knicker-bockered legs.

‘Let us go away,’ said Punch. ‘That is not a pretty place.’

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had left the cab, and all the luggage was being taken into the house. At the doorstep stood a woman in black, and she smiled largely, with dry chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg—behind him a boy of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed the trio, and advanced without fear, as he had been accustomed to do in Bombay when callers came and he happened to be playing in the verandah.

‘How do you do?’ said he. ‘I am Punch.’ But they were all looking at the luggage—all except the gray man, who shook hands with Punch, and said he was ‘a smart little fellow.’ There was much running about and banging of boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the sofa in the dining-room and considered things.

‘I don’t like these people,’ said Punch. ‘But never mind. We’ll go away soon. We have always went away soon from everywhere. I wish we was gone back to Bombay soon.’

The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mamma wept at intervals, and showed the woman in black all Punch’s clothes—a liberty which Punch resented. ‘But p’raps she’s a new white ayah,’ he thought. ‘I’m to call her Antirosa, but she doesn’t call me Sahib. She says just Punch,’ he confided to Judy. ‘What is Antirosa?’