"We can't wait till Monday." "I've done," said Norman; "I'll run down to the hospital and find out.
May I, mamma ?" "Without your pudding, old fellow ?" "I don't want pudding," said Norman, slipping back his chair.

"May I, mamma ?" "To be sure you may;" and Norman, with a hand on the back of Ethel's chair, took a flying leap over his own, that set all the glasses ringing.
"Stop, stop! know what you are going after, sir," cried his father.
"What will they know there of Cocksmoor, or the man whose wife has twins?
You must ask for the accident in number five." "And oh, Norman, come back in time!" said Ethel.
"I'll be bound I'm back before Etheldred the Unready wants me," he answered, bounding off with an elasticity that caused his mother to say the boy was made of india-rubber; and then putting his head in by the window to say, "By-the-bye, if there's any pudding owing to me, that little chorister fellow of ours, Bill Blake, has got a lot of voracious brothers that want anything that's going.

Tom and Blanche might take it down to 'em; I'm off! Hooray!" and he scampered headlong up the garden, prolonging his voice into a tremendous shout as he got farther off, leaving every one laughing, and his mother tenderly observing that he was going to run a quarter of a mile and back, and lose his only chance of pudding for the week--old Bishop Whichcote's rules contemplating no fare but daily mutton, to be bought at a shilling per sheep.

A little private discussion ensued between Harry and Hector on the merits of the cakes at Ballhatchet's gate, and old Nelly's pies, which led the doctor to mourn over the loss of the tarts of the cranberries, that used to grow on Cocksmoor, before it was inhabited, and to be the delight of the scholars of Stoneborough, when he was one of them--and then to enchant the boys by relations of ancient exploits, especially his friend Spencer climbing up, and engraving a name on the top of the market cross, now no more--swept away by the Town Council in a fit of improvement, which had for the last twenty years enraged the doctor at every remembrance of it.

Perhaps at this moment his wife could hardly sympathise, when she thought of her boys emulating such deeds.
"Papa," said Ethel, "will you lend me a pair of spectacles for the walk ?" "And make yourself one, Ethel," said Flora.
"I don't care--I want to see the view." "It is very bad for you, Ethel," further added her mother; "you will make your sight much shorter if you accustom your eyes to them." "Well, mamma, I never do wear them about the house." "For a very good reason," said Margaret; "because you haven't got them." "No, I believe Harry stole them in the holidays." "Stole them!" said the doctor; "as if they weren't my property, unjustifiably appropriated by her!" "They were that pair that you never could keep on, papa," said Ethel--"no use at all to you.