the Malabar.' He was an admiral once. But he liked it. He is a nice old gentleman, but people do say he is 'excentric.'
Father got a poem that said:
'Please turn your eyes round in their sockets,
And put both your hands in your pockets;
Your eyes will show you things so gay,
And I hope you'll find enough in your pockets to pay
For the things you buy.
Good-bye!'
And he laughed and seemed pleased; but when Mrs. Morrison, Albert's mother, got that poem about the black beetle that was poisoned she was not so pleased, and she said it was horrid, and made her flesh creep. You know the poem. It says:
'Oh, beetle, how I weep to see
Thee lying on thy poor back:
It is so very sad to see
You were so leggy and black.
I wish you were crawling about alive again,
But many people think this is nonsense and a shame.'
Noël would recite, no matter what we said, and he stood up on a chair, and everyone, in their blind generousness, paid sixpence to hear him.
