"Let me carry down the puppy," said Nancy on the landing, with a break in her voice. "Then I can hold your dear little hand."
"Oh no!" said Anne-Marie. "I'll carry the puppy. You can hold on to the bannisters."
So Nancy walked down behind Anne-Marie and the puppy. Fräulein was in front, dreading the moment of leave-taking, and thinking with terror of the possibility of travelling all the way to Staten Island with a loud and tearful Anne-Marie. So she started a new topic of conversation.
"You shall have pudding every day," she said, trying to turn round on the second landing to Anne-Marie, close behind her, and nearly dropping the satchel and the mice, as the violin-case caught in the bannisters. "One day it shall be sago, another day tapioca...."
"I don't like tapioca," said Anne-Marie, walking down the stairs. "I don't like nothing of all that."
They were at the door. By request of Nancy, nobody was there to speak to them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them from behind the drawing-room curtains.
"Then what do you like for dessert?" said Fräulein, going down the stone steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.
"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her into her carriage. Fräulein got in after her, with the many packages. And the puppy barked at the mice.
"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with great difficulty through the carriage-window across Fräulein, and the violin, and the mice, that were on Fräulein's lap. "God bless you! God bless you and keep you, my own darling!"