286 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
ing, the cooking of which occupied our whole thought 
during the afternoon, and kept us in an excited state 
until school broke up, and we returned home to feast 
upon our luxuries. Then there were the roast apples, 
which, like joints, were suspended by a string from the 
stalk, and swung from the brass crane to hiss and spurt 
before the heat. That they were taken up half done, 
and the mouth burnt by eating them too hot, were con¬ 
ditions as essential to such a treat as the apples them¬ 
selves. Spanish liquorice-water, and orange-peel-water, 
were each luxuries in their way very early in life; though 
we soon came to regard them as treats more adapted 
for girls—certainly not for such as called each other 
“fellows.” The putting of milk into bottles, and churn¬ 
ing it into butter, was an amusement which we never 
tired of, though many a scolding for stealing the milk, 
and many a threat to “ take away that nasty bottle,” 
made us wary how we were detected in that class of 
experiments. We were very young indeed when we 
made toffee “on the sly,” in a table-spoon \ but we 
never entirely got rid of one dream, which was that 
of having nothing but toasted currant-buns for breakfast 
—a fancy which haunts us even now occasionally, and 
which, strange to say, we have never realized. 
Pocket-money was always an important matter. The 
boy who could afford to buy a whole cocoa-nut—and a 
Jew always stood near the school to tantalize us with a 
bag-full, while he held several open ones in his hands, 
and offered “ ^arf a nut for twopence; a *ole un for four- 
pence,”—a boy who could do that was accounted very 
rich, and was looked -at many times in the course of a 
