The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

The house they took for the winter was in Kensington Gore, and the children walked every day with their nurses in Kensington Gardens. When first they arrived, the great trees, with branches that grew almost low enough to be pulled (if you jumped), were thick with leaves, and shady like houses. Then the leaves tumbled off and lay on the ground, and, when Nannan didn't see you, you shuffled your feet through them, kicking up a dust and making a noise like crackly paper. Afterwards, men brought brooms and swept the leaves into heaps and burned them in little bonfires; and then what fun it was to run like blind men, with eyes tight shut, through the clouds of smoke. You trundled your hoop up and down these paths, but didn't go far away, because you couldn't see where they ended for mist; and Nannan said you might get lost, or fall into a round pond. And one day a strange, thick, yellow mist came down, and hid even the path you were walking on, and made your throat tickle and your eyes sting; and Nannan and Eliza, talking about pea-soup, rushed for home, feeling frightened, big as they were, and having to be helped across the road by a policeman, who made light with what Eliza said was a "bull's-eye."

After this, Cuffy got a cough and had to take tablespoonfuls of cod-liver oil, and to stay indoors while the Dumplings walked. It was dull work. The nursery was so high up that you couldn't see anybody but trees from the windows, which were barred; and you were not allowed to look out at all, if they were open. Nannan said looking over made her poor old head dizzy; and she lived in fear of seeing one of them "land on the pavement." So Cuffy hammered with his knuckles on the panes, making tunes for himself, or beat them out on his drum or xylophone, till Nannan, sewing by the fire, said her poor old head was like to split.