36 TOM HICKATHRIFT.

 

this manner: his mother, it seems, as
well as himself, for they lived in the
‘days of merry old England, slept upon
straw. Now, being a tidy old creature,
- she must every now and then have a new
bed, and one day having been promised
a bottle of straw by a neighbouring
farmer, after much begging, she got her
son to fetch it. ‘Tom, however, made
her borrow a cart-rope first, before he
would budge a step, without saying

what he wanted it for; but the poor