'A fellow feeling! eh, sister? Kill her away, boy, tear her out! Yes, give her to sister, and tell her that's the way to serve sour females! I declare, Ursula, she has got something of your expression.'
'Oh Wynnie, Wynnie!' said Nuttie, as he trotted up to her, 'is sister cross and ugly?' and she opened her arms to him.
'Sister, Wyn's own sister,' said the child affectionately, letting himself be kissed as he saw her grieved. 'She shan't be ugly old woman—ugly old woman go in fire.'
So perilously near the flame did he run to burn the old woman that Mr. Egremont shouted to her that in spite of all that humbug, she was perfectly careless of the child, although if she had withheld him she would probably have been blamed for thwarting him.
'Are you quite fair towards Ursula?' the aunt ventured to say when the girl had gone to dress for walking down with her to the Rectory. 'It is hard on her, and not good for the boy to upset her authority.'
'Eh? Why, the girl is just a governess manquee, imbued with the spirit of all those old women who bred her up. A nice life the poor child would have of it, but for me.'
'I am sure she is devotedly attached to him.'
'Hein! So she thinks; but trust human nature for loving to wreak discipline on the child who has cut her out.'
'That is scarcely just, Alwyn. She was greatly relieved to be cut out.'
Mr. Egremont laughed at this, and his sister-in-law indignantly added with all the authority of a successful parent, 'Anyway, nothing is so bad for a child as collision between the authorities in a family. Ursula is doing her best to act as a mother to that child, and it will be very injurious to him to interfere with her influences.'