Shall us go in to house and fetch mun?
Then please to come in. Please to come right in, Mr. Brimacott," she
added, addressing the Corporal. So they passed through the little low
door into the cottage, and in two seconds the children were standing on
chairs and examining all the treasures on the walls. For Sally had
been a servant at Bracefort Hall, and was never so glad as when little
Dick and Elsie Bracefort came to pay her a visit; first because she
thought there was no family to equal the Braceforts in the whole wide
world, and secondly, because these children had lost their father at
Salamanca just eight years before to a day. And there were wonderful
things on the walls, too. First and foremost there were two coloured
pictures, one of France and Britannia joining hands, with a very woolly
lamb and a very singular lion lying down together at their feet; and
the other of Commerce and Plenty, represented as two very slender
ladies with very short waists, loading Britannia with corn and fruit
and flowers of the brightest colours. The children had heard Sally
tell the story of them fifty times but were quite content to hear it
again--how Sally had bought them of a hawker in the year 1802, for joy
that peace was come at last, and how that wicked Boney had plunged all
the world into war again. Then Dick jumped up and brought down a china
figure of a man in a blue coat on a prancing horse with his hand
pointing upwards, who was no other than Boney, the terrible Bonaparte
himself, as he appeared when crossing the Alps.
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