Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage disconsolately exclaimed—
“Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to be in his bed?”
“Ha, Sibby!” cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery, withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. “You see your baby has begun to run alone.”
“Ah, Master Lance, ‘twas your doing. You always was the mischief.”
“No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was in the house; but I’ll bring him back again.”
“May I not stay a little longer, Sibby,” said Clement, rather piteously, “to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day.”
“If ye’ll take yer jelly, sir,” said Sibby, “as it’s fainting ye’ll be, and bringing our hearts into our mouths.”
So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance’s children, then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only sing once, she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her once crowded nursery.
“What shall that once be, Clem?” asked Lance.
“‘Lead, kindly Light.’”