“Let me try him!” said Rosie; “I’ll make him eat something. Come Freddy darling, you love Rosie, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Fred.
“Well, you’ll eat some breakfast; come now.”
“I won’t eat none bekfus’—do away.”
Rosie turned round and looked in a despairing way at her own three brothers.
“If only nurse were at home!” she said.
“Master Fred,” said Patience, “if you won’t eat, you must get down from the breakfast-table. I have got to clear up, you know.”
She popped the little boy on the floor. He looked round in a bewildered fashion.
“Let’s have a very exciting kind of play, and perhaps he’ll join in,” said Rosie, in a whisper. “Let’s play at kittens—that’s the loveliest of all our games.”
“Kittens” was by no means a quiet pastime. It consisted, indeed, in wild romps on all-fours, each child assuming for the time the character of a kitten, and jumping after balls of paper, which they caught in their mouths.