Pennie was very wretched, and felt she could not bear it much longer.
She was in the nursery one morning looking listlessly out of the window, when her attention was caught by a conversation going on between Nurse and Mrs Hawthorn, who was sitting there with Cicely in her arms.
“I know no more than that baby, ma’am,” said Nurse emphatically, as she had said a hundred times before, “why or wherefore Master Ambrose should take such a thing into his head. It’s easy to frame that he should get scared—when once he was up there in the dark, for he’s a timid child and always has been. But what took him there all alone? That’s what I want to know!”
“I cannot understand it,” said Mrs Hawthorn; “but it makes him so much worse to ask him questions that we must leave it alone until he is stronger. We cannot be too thankful that he was not killed.”
“Which I never doubted for one moment that he was, ma’am, when I found him,” continued Nurse; “he was lying all crumpled up and stone-cold, for all the world like Miss Nancy’s dormouse when she forgot to feed it for a week.”
On this theme Nurse was apt to become very voluble, and there were few things she liked better than describing her own feelings on the occasion. Mrs Hawthorn held up her hand entreatingly: “Do not talk of it, Nurse,” she said; “I cannot bear it.” And then they went on to discuss other matters.
Now all this while Pennie had been trying to make up her mind to speak. There was a fly just in front of her on the window-pane, and as she watched it crawling slowly along she said to herself:
“When it gets as far as the corner I will tell mother.” But alas! before the fly had nearly completed his journey Mrs Hawthorn rose to leave the nursery. As she passed Pennie she stopped and said:
“Why, Pennie, my child, it is not like you to be idle. And you look mournful; what’s the matter?”
“I think Miss Pennie frets after her brother, ma’am,” observed Nurse.