28 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

feeling “ big” about anything. His leg was badly crushed,
and he lay in bed, —it seemed to him as if he lay in bed as
long as all his life had been outside of bed before.

At first he was very still, and weak, and patient. Nobody
was allowed to come in but his mother and Lill and the new
girl, who wore a white apron, and made up his bed, and sang
a funny little Irish song that he liked.

But by and by he began to be better.

“ He’s as cross as a bear,” said Lill one day when the
doctor was there.

“ Glad of it,” said Dr. Bryonia. ‘“ Good sign! The crosser
the better! Boys are always cross when they are getting
better.”

“ Are n’t girls cross too?’’ asked Lill.

“QO, girls!” said the doctor, “ why, girls ought not to be
cross at all!”

Lill didn’t say anything. She thought this was very pe-
culiar in the doctor. But then, he was only a man.

However that might be, Trotty grew better and crosser,
and crosser and better, very fast.

What should they do with him? They had read to him,
they had sung to him, they had talked to him. They cut him
paper soldiers. They made him paper money. They bought
him a new stamp-book. They invented unheard-of stamps
(such as the thirty-cent Dreamland, and a Fairyland penny-
currency, and a fine newspaper-imprint direct from the
Postmaster-General of the moon). They tortured their con- °