at anything. He was a calm old man, was poor Henry. It took a good deal to astonish him.”
Young Tony tried to interest his boy friends in the back of poor old Henry Birkbeck’s tombstone, but nobody cared. They were all in too much of a hurry to care for an occupation so slow as cleaning tombstones, but Tony worked away perseveringly. He cleaned it with soap, and he cleaned it with soda, with brickdust and vinegar, with rotten stone and washleather, with patience and elbow grease, and the last two, as you know, will clean almost anything. So after a time a few letters began to show distinctly here and there, and presently Tony found he could read whole words.
There was “milk” and “mountain,” and a word that looked like “Jilk,” only of course it could not be that. And the last word of all was “reign,” and the second word of all was “Tony.”
“It must be something to do with me,” said young Tony, “because of my name being in it.”
“It must have something to do with the King,” said old Tony, “because it says ‘reign,’ so you’d better cut off to the Palace, and look sharp about it, or His Majesty will know the reason why.”
