There was silence.
"Well, for children, I suppose you managed as wisely as you could. Now go back to Nurse, she will know how to punish you. And never do such a thing again. I thought I told you not to encourage beggars when I sent that boy away the other day."
"Nurse will be so fearfully angry," said Daffy.
"You deserve her to be. It was doing it secretly that must be punished. I will not have you grow up deceitful children."
"But Nurse thinks everything wicked," wailed Freda; "she wants us to have no fun at all."
"You don't want fun when your father lies dead in a foreign land," said Mrs. Harrington sharply.
Then she relented as she saw the forlorn look on the little girls' faces.
"There's right fun and wrong fun, and the Bible ought not to be turned into fun. Never. Now go back to the nursery."
Freda and Daffy crept out of their mother's room. Nurse was waiting for them, and did what she very seldom did now, she gave them each a sound whipping, and put them to bed.
And Freda and Daffy were two very unhappy little girls for all that day. They felt that from the grown-up people's eyes they had behaved badly; but they wondered if God looked down from heaven and understood better than Nurse.