"May I go to see Miss Bertha?"
"No. I can't spare any one to take you, and it is too damp and cold for you to be out to-day. Stay in the nursery like a good child."
Nurse was a picture of an old woman. Round and ruddy, with silver hair smoothed under her big cap, she looked the embodiment of health and content. Yet she suffered from many twinges of rheumatism, and had an old-fashioned horror of open air. The nursery was like a hothouse in the winter time, and Christina was consequently delicate, and peculiarly susceptible to cold.
The child stood at the large window when Nurse had left her, and looked out with some wistfulness across the park towards the goal of her desire. It was a tiny cottage, originally one of the park lodges, but owing to the alteration of the drive which once ran past it, was now let to a single lady, and stood in half an acre of ground, railed off from the surrounding park.
Christina heaved a sigh. She breathed hard on the panes of glass, and traced some letters with her finger.
"I'm afraid of fathers and mothers," she acknowledged to herself. "I don't know what they're like. Emily's father isn't kind to her, she says, and I've seen some mothers in the village who slap their little boys. I wish I could tell Miss Bertha."
Suddenly she gave a scream of delight.
"Here she is walking up the drive, and I do believe Dawn is with her! Oh, I hope, I hope they're coming to see me. And I forgot Dawn's father. He is kind; oh, I do hope my father will be like him!"
She was not long left in doubt. A very short time afterwards the nursery door opened, and a little old lady, accompanied by a rosy-cheeked, fair-haired boy; came forward.
"We thought we should find you in, dear," Miss Bertha said, "and as Dawn is spending the day with me, I brought him along."