Then there
were a dozen or two of the best port he could get, for a lady who had
just had a baby, and whose husband and his income he knew from business
relations. Nor were the children forgotten. Every house in his street
and ours in which he knew there were little ones, had a parcel of toys
and sweet things prepared for it.
"As soon as the afternoon grew dusky, we set out with as many as we
could carry. A slight disguise secured me from discovery, my duty being
to leave the parcels at the different houses. In the case of the more
valuable of them, my duty was to ask for the master or mistress, and see
the packet in safe hands. In this I was successful in every instance.
It must have been a great relief to my uncle when the number of parcels
was sufficiently diminished to restore to him the use of his hands,
for to him they were as necessary for rubbing as a tail is to a dog for
wagging--in both cases for electrical reasons, no doubt. He dropped
several parcels in the vain attempt to hold them and perform the usual
frictional movement notwithstanding; so he was compelled instead to go
through a kind of solemn pace, which got more and more rapid as the
parcels decreased in number, till it became at last, in its wild
movements, something like a Highlander's sword-dance. We had to go home
several times for more, keeping the best till the last.
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