"If I had heard the voice, I should have had to get a sword and go; I should have been obliged to lead the soldiers into battle and kill; I should have been wicked if I had said no; and oh, I couldn't, couldn't have done it! And it might have been me!"
Tears began to crowd into her eyes. She shook her curly head, and unclasping her hands, she knelt on the rug, and with closed eyes put up this passionate prayer:
"Please God, never send a voice to me to tell me to fight in battle. I shall be a coward, I shan't be able to do it. O God, never tell me to kill anybody! And oh, please, never turn me into a Joan of Arc!"
After which prayer she dried her eyes and was slightly comforted.
She did not turn again to her book. The tragic fate of the maid of France was too vivid and real to be easily effaced. It was almost a relief when she heard her nurse call her. She trotted upstairs and met her at the nursery door. That good woman had a perturbed look on her round good-tempered face.
"Come in, Miss Tina, and hear what I've got to tell you. Me and Mrs. Hallam have both been struck down by a letter—such news, and so little time to prepare; but we have had rumours, and I always said the master would never come home again till he got a lady to come with him. 'Tis eight years this coming Christmas that your sweet mother was taken, and 'tis not to be wondered at. And now you'll have to prepare yourself to meet your father and a stepmother all at once, and that not a day later than next Saturday. There will be change here at last. Me and Mrs. Hallam have lived so quiet that it has quite upset us; but 'tis only natural and right after all, and I'm not the kind of ignorant, uneducated person to be speaking to you against a second mother. She may be the very one to slip into your mother's shoes, and she may not, but we'll hope for the best."
Christina looked up at her nurse with big eyes.
"I don't understand," she murmured. "Is father coming home?"
"Yes, and he's bringing a new wife, and a room has got to be prepared for a young gentleman; but who or what he is, me and Mrs. Hallam can't make out. Now you be a good girl and stay quiet up here, for I've promised to help Mrs. Hallam in unpacking some of the glass and china, and getting the drawing-room put to rights."
Nurse was bustling away, when Christina called after her imploringly: