The child Corona looked past him with a gaze that put aside these foolish antics, and fastened itself on Nurse Branscome.
"I think I shall like you," she said composedly and with the clearest English accent. "But I do not quite know who you are. Are you fetching me to Daddy?"
"Yes," said Nurse Branscome, and nodded.
She seldom or never wasted words. Nods made up a good part of her conversation always.
Corona stood up, by this action conveying to the grown-ups—for she, too, economised speech—that she was ready to go, and at once. Youth is selfish, even in the sweetest-born of natures. Baker Müller and his good wife looked at her wistfully. She had come into their childless life, and had taken unconscious hold on it, scarce six days ago—the inside of a week. They looked at her wistfully. Her eyes were on Nurse Branscome, who stood for the future. Yet she remembered that they had been kind. Herr Müller, kind to the last, ran off and routed up a seaman to carry her box to the gangway. There, while bargaining with a porter, Nurse Branscome had time to observe with what natural good manners the child suffered herself to be folded in Frau Müller's ample embrace, and how prettily she shook hands with the good baker. She turned about, even once or twice, to wave her farewells.
"But she is naturally reserved," Nurse Branscome decided. "Well, she'll be none the worse for that."
She had hardly formed this judgment when Corona went a straight way to upset it. A tuft of groundsel had rooted itself close beside the traction rails a few paces from the waterside. With a little cry— almost a sob—the child swooped upon the weed, and plucking it, pressed it to her lips.
"I promised to kiss the first living thing I met in England," she explained.
"Then you might have begun with me," said Nurse Branscome, laughing.
"Oh, that's good—I like you to laugh! This is real England, merry England, and I used to 'spect it was so good that folks went about laughing all the time, just because they lived in it."