“It is merely a little drizzle, that would not hurt a fly!” exclaimed Dora. “Mamma never minds a few tiny drops when she puts on her waterproof cloak.”
“Mamma never minds anything that has only to do with her own comfort,” observed Amy.
“So there is more need that we should mind for her,” said Agnes.
“I’m sure that I wish that I could go to the shops myself without troubling, any one!” exclaimed the impatient Dora. “If it were not for this stupid, tiresome infection, I’d get Lucius to go with me this minute, and would we not return laden with linen, pasteboard, and all sorts of things! But mamma’s fear of setting other people coughing and whooping makes her keep us shut up here in prison.”
“Mamma is quite right!” exclaimed Lucius. “I say so, though I hate more than you do being boxed up here in the house.”
“Mamma is quite right,” re-echoed poor Agnes, as soon as she recovered voice after another violent fit of coughing, which almost choked her. “I should not like to give any one else such a dreadful complaint as this.”
Mrs. Temple now entered the room, with several things in her hand. “I have found a nice bit of red Turkey cloth,” said she, “so my little Elsie will be able to set to work on her curtains at once.”
The child clapped her hands with pleasure, and then scampered off for her little Tunbridge-ware work-box.
“I hope that you have found the linen too, mamma,” cried Dora; “I am in a hurry for it, a very great hurry,” she added, regardless of an indignant look from Agnes, and a pleading one from Amy.
“I am sorry that I have no suitable linen,” replied the lady, “but I intend to go out and buy some.”