On
these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the right
of egress and ingress."
"Egress and ingress?"
"Egress and ingress."
"Is that foreign for cowslips, mamma--and oxlips?"
"Ha! ha! the child's head is full of cowslips. There is the dictionary;
look out Egress, and afterward look out Ingress."
When he had added these two words to his little vocabulary, his mother
asked him if he would be good enough to tell her why he did not care
much about all the beautiful flowers in the garden, and was so excited
about cowslips, which appeared to her a flower of no great beauty, and
the smell rather sickly, begging his pardon.
This question posed him dreadfully: he looked at her in a sort of comic
distress, and then sat gravely down all in a heap, about a yard off, to
think.
Finally he turned to her with a wry face, and said, "Why _do_ I,
mamma?"
She smiled deliciously. "No, no, sir," said she. "How can I get inside
your little head and tell what is there? There must be a reason, I
suppose; and you know you and I are never satisfied till we get at the
reason of a thing. But there is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to
find it out. Now, run and open the gate--stay, are there any cows in
that field?"
"Sometimes, mamma; but they have no horns, you know.
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