“And what shall I call you, my dear?”
“I’m Missy.”
“No, Missy, me—me eldest,” cried the other.
“Bless the poor children!” exclaimed Mrs. Wheatfield, laughing, “they be both of ‘em eldest, as one may say.”
“They are twins, then?” said Aurelia.
“More than that—all three of them came together! I’ve heard tell of such a thing once or twice, but never of all living and thriving. Folk said it was a judgment on my Lady that she spoke sharp and hard to a poor beggar woman with a child on each arm. It was not a week out before my Lady herself was down, quite unexpected, as I may say, for she was staying here for a week, with a lot of company, when these three was born. They do say she was nigh beside herself that the like of that should have happened to her. Mr. Wayland, he was not so ill pleased, but the poor little things had to be got out of the house any way, for she could not abear to hear of them. Mrs. Rolfe, as was an old servant of the family, took that one, and I was right glad to have you, my pretty one, for I had just lost my babe at a fortnight old, and the third was sent to Goody Bowles, for want of a better. They says as how my Lady means to bring them out one by one, and to make as this here is bigger, and the other up stairs is lesser, and never let on that they are all of an age.”
The good gossip must have presumed greatly on the children’s want of comprehension if she did not suppose that they understood her at least as well as the young lady to whom her dialect was strange.
“And has she not seen them?”
“Never till last Monday, if you’ll believe me miss, when she drove down in her coach, and the children were all brought home. I thought she might have said something handsome, considering the poor little babe as my Missy here was when I had her—not so long as my hand—and scarce able to cry enough to show she was alive. The work I and my good man had with her! He would walk up and down half the night with her. Not as we grudged it. He is as fond of the child as myself; and Mr. Wayland, he knew it. ‘She has a good nurse, dame,’ says he to me, with the water in his eyes, before he went to foreign parts. But my Lady! When the little one as had been with Goody Bowles—an ignorant woman, you see—cried and clung to her, and kicked, ‘Little savages all,’ says my Lady. There was thanks to them that had had more work to rear her children than ever with one of her own! ‘Perfect little rustics!’ she said, even when you made your curtsey as pretty as could be, didn’t you, my little lammie?”
“Mammy Rolfe taught me to make my curtsey like a London lady,” said the other child, the most advanced in manners.