WADDLES. CHAPTER I. ADDLES, here's a worm!" Such was the exclamation I heard from the lips of a merry blue-eyed boy of eight or nine years, as I stood leaning over the fence which separated my brother's garden from his neighbour's. "Waddles, here's a worm, old fellow," again sounded in my ears, as I once more approached the fence. Hoping to have my curiosity gratified as to who Waddles might be, I sought for a loop-hole, that I might reconnoitre. At last I succeeded in finding a spot where I could see my little neighbours (for from the sound of voices I found there were more than one) without myself being seen. On a nice smooth grass plot sat a little fairhaired girl about five years of age, holding in her lap a doll, which she was making pretence to hush to sleep. About two feet distant from her stood a boy of seven years, playing at ball. At the upper end of the garden stood the blue-eyed boy I had first seen, and whose voice I had twice heard. He was assisting the gardener to put down some fresh sods. And in a shady cornerfrom which proceeded every two or three minutes sounds of happy bursts of laughter and smothered kisses was a rosy-cheeked girl of ten or eleven years, teaching a baby to walk. I stood watching their merry gambols for more than half-an-hour, in which time I found that the blue-eyed boy was named Tom, and that Frank was the name of the little fellow with the ball. "So it must be one of the girls who is named Waddles," I mused; "it cannot be the little fairfaced lady with the doll." Oh, no! not for one moment could I fancy her name anything so comical. To set the matter at rest, I went round into the other garden, and sitting down upon the grass beside my little friend who owned the doll, I said "Will you allow me to look at your baby?" "Oh! yes, sir," she replied, at the same time |