Excerpt from My Little Boy Blue Claude meant to be a doctor like father, but he had not gone up to London yet; he was still in the low white house with his uncle, Captain Russell; but he spent most of his time with us. The society of a gouty, irascible old man was not particularly attrae tive to a high-spirited youth, and Claude always firmly maintained that his real home was with us. Aunt Pen was very good to him, but sometimes she would put on her severe face and say, Now, Claude, both you and Maud have been over your music long enough. Music is all very well, and you play very nicely, both of you, but it is not the whole duty of man, or woman either; so, Maud, get your darning, and let Claude go home; the Captain has had a dull day of it. And though I grumbled and Claude frowned, we never disobeyed her. Fancy disobeying dear Aunt Pen! I wonder if any family was ever happier than ours. To be sure, the year after dear mother died was very sad; and I never noticed before then that father's hair was growing gray, and that he had those little puckers round his eyes; but after the first few months he kept his trouble to himself. Now and then when I met him on his rounds, driving himself as usual in his old gig, I was struck with surprise and pain to see how old and grave he looked; but he always brightened up and looked young again directly he caught sight of me. Halloa, Maud, do you want a lift? He would say, pulling up old Whitefoot sharply. Jump in and I'll give you the reins for he knew what a treat this would be to me. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.