‘My Mite shall have a bit of his funny hand,’ said Mrs. Morton, and Ida was dealing with the claw, when Eden interposed and said she did not think her ladyship would wish Master Michael to have any.
‘Just a taste, nurse, with some of the cream,’ said Mrs. Morton. ‘Here, Mitey dear.’
‘No, Master Michael, mamma would say no,’ said Eden.
‘Really, Eden, you might let Mrs. Morton judge in her own house,’ said Ida.
‘Master Morton is under my charge, ma’am, and I am responsible for him,’ said Eden, respectfully but firmly. But Ida held out the claw, and Michael made a dart at it.
Eden again said ‘No,’ but he looked up at her with an exulting roguish grin, and clasped it, whereupon she laid hold of him by the waist, and bore him off, kicking and roaring, amid the pitiful and indignant exclamations of his aunt and cousin.
It may be that the faithful Eden was somewhat wanting in tact, by her determined attention to the routine that chafed her hosts; but she had been
forced to come away without directions, and could only hold fast to the discipline of her well-ordered nursery under all obstacles.
Master Michael was to have his cup of milk and run on the beach with the nursery-maid long before the usual awakening of the easy-going household, which regarded late hours as belonging to gentility; then, after the general breakfast, his small lessons, over which there often was a battle, first, because he felt injured by not doing them with his mother, and next, because his hostesses regarded them as a hardship, and taught him to cry over ‘Reading without tears,’ besides detaining him as late as they could over the breakfast, or proposing to take him out at once, without waiting for that quarter of an hour’s work. Or when out-of-doors, they would not bring him home for the siesta, on which his nurse insisted, though it was often only lying down in the dark; nor had Mrs. Morton any scruple in breaking it, if she wanted to exhibit him to her friends, though if it were interrupted or omitted, the child’s temper was the worse all the afternoon.
‘That nurse is a thorough tyrant over the poor little darling, and a very impertinent woman besides,’ said Mrs. Morton.