"I shall be quite willing to keep Dreamikins; but, my dear Minna, you will be back at the end of your first week out there."
"Not I. This War is altering us all. And I shall be nearer Charlie. It's an awful life when he's out there and I'm here. I was wondering if I should send Annette away and get a nursery governess, because the child must begin to learn something. Do you think Mrs. Harrington would let her little girls learn with Dreamikins? I wonder if I might call, or is it too soon after her husband's death?"
"Write and ask her," said Fibo. "I rather dread possible combats between Dreamikins and a governess. You would have to get the right sort, or there would always be squalls."
"Yes. Is the child extra naughty, do you think, Gus? She has such a will and personality, and her imagination runs riot. That's partly your fault. You always soaked me with poetry and romance, and so it appears in my child. Her father and I gaze at her half paralysed sometimes when she insists upon repeating to us conversations she has with her invisible playmates."
"That will right itself as she gets older. She is a lonely child, and is bound to invent companions if she has none. I did as a boy."
So they talked together, and before she went to bed that night she paid a last visit to Dreamikins.
She lay a picture of health and innocence; and then, as her mother stooped and kissed the soft, flushed cheek, Dreamikins smiled and murmured:
"It's no good to make up to me, Cherubine, I—are quite firm—I won't have you back."
[CHAPTER X]
The Governess