‘He’s a man, of course,’ replied Jonah. ‘Men know big things like that.’
‘The Aventures are true,’ Nixie put in gently. ‘That’s why they’re so big, and go on for ever and ever.’
‘It’s jolly when he puts us in them too, isn’t it?’ said Jonah, forgetting the masculine pose in his interest. ‘He puts me in most,’ the boy added proudly.
‘But I do the funniest things,’ declared Toby, slightly aggrieved. ‘It was me that rode on the moose over the tree-tops to the North Pole, and understood all it said——’
‘That’s nothing,’ cried her brother, making a huge blot across his copy-book. ‘He had to get me to turn on the roarer boryalis.’
‘Nixie’s always leader, anyhow,’ replied the child, losing herself for a moment in the delight of that tremendous blot. She often borrowed Nixie in this way to obliterate Jonah when her own strength was insufficient.
‘Of course she is,’ was the manly verdict. ‘She knows all those things almost as well as Uncle Paul. Don’t you, Nixie?’
But Nixie was too busy cleaning up his blot with bits of torn blotting-paper to reply, and the arrival of Mlle. Fleury put an end to the discussion for the moment.
And Paul himself, as the big child leading the littler children, or following their guidance when such guidance was clear, accepted his new duties with a happy heart. His friendship with them all grew delightfully, but especially, of course, his friendship with Nixie. This elemental child slipped into his life everywhere, into his play, as into his work; she assumed the right to look after him; with charming gravity she positively mothered him; and Paul, whose life hitherto had known little enough of such sympathy and care, simply loved it.
If her native poesy won his imagination, her practical interest in his welfare and comfort equally won his heart. The way she ferreted about in his room and study, so serious, so thoughtful, attending to so many little details that no one else ever thought of,—all this came into his life with a seductive charm as of something entirely new and strange to him. It was Nixie who always saw to it that his ink-pot was full and his quill pens trimmed; that flowers had no time to fade upon his table; and that matches for his pipes never failed in the glass match-stands. He used up matches, it seemed, almost by the handful.