"Have you been worrying Mr. Trimmer?" asked Nurse, taking the rose from Freda's hand and sniffing it thoughtfully.
Mr. Trimmer was the head gardener. The children shook their heads.
"Oh dear no! Mr. Trimmer isn't without legs, and he chases us away from the greenhouses whenever he sees us," said Daffy. "Smell my lily, Nurse. He told us to choose any flower we liked for you."
"Now just speak up straight, and tell me what you've been doing."
Nurse eyed them sternly.
They told their story breathlessly, each interrupting the other in their anxiety to appease Nurse's gathering wrath.
"You mean to tell me you pushed yourselves into a strange garden, and spoke to a strange gentleman without any one's permission? Where do you get your forwardness, I wonder! In my day children would have died rather than behaved so."
Freda and Daffy were silent. Nurse scolded on, and then Daffy looked at her very sweetly:
"A poor, sick soldier, all alone, Nurse! And he has a little niece he loves, and she isn't there to comfort him, and he loves good Christians, and tries to be one himself. We told him you tried to make us into them, and he sent you these flowers, and hopes you'll let us go to see him again. I think you'd like him very much if you saw him, and I know he'd like you. And this is his little niece!"
Daffy held out her precious sketch.