NURSE ROSEMARY HAS HER REWARD
"Mr.Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, with patient insistence, "Ireally do want you to sit down, and give your mind to the tea-table.
How can you remember where each thing is placed, if you keep jumping up, and moving your chair into different positions? And last time you pounded the table to attract my attention, which was already anxiously fixed upon you, you nearly knocked over your own tea, and sent floods of mine into the saucer.If you cannot behave better, Ishall ask Margery for a pinafore, and sit you up on a high chair!"Garth stretched his legs in front of him, and his arms over his head; and lay back in his chair, laughing joyously.
"Then I should have to say: 'Please, Nurse, may I get down?' What a cheeky little thing you are becoming! And you used to be quite oppressively polite.I suppose you would answer: 'If you say your grace nicely, Master Garth, you may.' Do you know the story of 'Tommy, you should say Your Grace'?""You have told it to me twice in the last forty-eight hours," said Nurse Rosemary, patiently.
"Oh, what a pity! I felt so like telling it now.If you had really been the sort of sympathetic person Sir Deryck described, you would have said: 'No; and I should so LOVE to hear it!'""No; and I should so LOVE to hear it!" said Nurse Rosemary.
"Too late! That sort of thing, to have any value should be spontaneous.It need not be true; but it MUST be spontaneous.But, talking of a high chair,--when you say those chaffy things in a voice like Jane's, and just as Jane would have said them--oh, my wig!--Do you know, that is the duchess's only original little swear.
All the rest are quotations.And when she says: 'My wig!' we all try not to look at it.It is usually slightly awry.The toucan tweaks it.He is so very LOVING, dear bird!""Now hand me the buttered toast," said Nurse Rosemary; "and don't tell me any more naughty stories about the duchess.No! That is the thin bread-and-butter.I told you you would lose your bearings.The toast is in a warm plate on your right.Now let us make believe I am Miss Champion, and hand it to me, as nicely as you will be handing it to her, this time to-morrow.""It is easy to make believe you are Jane, with that voice," said Garth; "and yet--I don't know.I have never really associated you with her.One little sentence of old Rob's made all the difference to me.He said you had fluffy floss-silk sort of hair.No one could ever imagine Jane with fluffy floss-silk sort of hair! And I believe that one sentence saved the situation.Otherwise, your voice would have driven me mad, those first days.As it was, I used to wonder sometimes if I could possibly bear it.You understand why, now;don't you? And yet, in a way, it is NOT like hers.Hers is deeper;and she often speaks with a delicious kind of drawl, and uses heaps of slang; and you are such a very proper little person; and possess what the primers call 'perfectly correct diction.' What fun it would be to hear you and Jane talk together! And yet--I don't know.Ishould be on thorns, all the time."
"Why?"
"I should be so awfully afraid lest you should not like one another.
You see, YOU have really, in a way, been more to me than any one else in the world; and SHE--well, she IS my world," said Garth, simply."And I should be so afraid lest she should not fully appreciate you; and you should not quite understand her.She has a sort of way of standing and looking people up and down, and, women hate it; especially pretty fluffy little women.They feel she spots all the things that come off.""Nothing of mine comes off," murmured Nurse Rosemary, "excepting my patient, when he will not stay on his chair.""Once," continued Garth, with the gleeful enjoyment in his voice which always presaged a story in which Jane figured, "there was a fearfully silly little woman staying at Overdene, when a lot of us were there.We never could make out why she was included in one of the duchess's 'best parties,' except that the dear duchess vastly enjoyed taking her off, and telling stories about her; and we could not appreciate the cleverness of the impersonation, unless we had seen the original.She was rather pretty, in a fussy, curling-tongs, wax-doll sort of way; but she never could let her appearance alone, or allow people to forget it.Almost every sentence she spoke, drew attention to it.We got very sick of it, and asked Jane to make her shut up.But Jane said: 'It doesn't hurt you, boys; and it pleases leer.Let her be.' Jane was always extra nice to people, if she suspected they were asked down in order to make sport for the duchess afterwards.Jane hated that sort of thing.She couldn't say much to her aunt; but we had to be very careful how we egged the duchess on, if Jane was within hearing.Well--one evening, after tea, a little group of us were waiting around the fire in the lower hall, to talk to Jane.It was Christmas time.The logs looked so jolly on the hearth.The red velvet curtains were drawn right across, covering the terrace door and the windows on either side.
