"Stop argufying at once," said Nurse sternly. "I punish you for your good, not because it pleases me. Why can't I turn you out into the garden without your rampaging about like wild beasts, and tearing and destroying everything you possess!"
"If you let us go to tea with Captain Arnold, we promise to come home cleaner than when we went!" Freda rashly asserted.
Nurse gave a sniff.
"That you couldn't do, if you pass through my hands before you go."
The little girls were silent. They fancied Nurse was relenting, and wisely sat still on their chairs without even kicking their feet till their half-hour was up.
When dinner-time came, Nurse told them she was going to let them go; and at four o'clock two daintily dressed little maidens in soft white silk frocks and shady straw hats walked sedately along by Nurse's side to the Dower House.
There was no hope of being allowed to crawl in at the entrancing little door to-day. They went down the avenue, out by the lodge gates, along the road until they came to some high green wooden gates in the big wall. Then they walked up a short broad drive with shrubberies on each side, and reached the front of the house.
A pleasant-looking maid opened the door.
"I have brought the young ladies," said Nurse, in a very superior tone, "and I hope they will behave nicely as they should. I will send the nurserymaid for them at seven o'clock. That is the time mentioned."
Then she went away, and the children crossed a wide hall with a black beam across it, and to this beam was suspended a child's swing.