“Miss Achsah and Miss Thyrza are both quite well.”
What was the name of the first one? The stupid woman had said it so quickly. However, she had got the name of one. Thyrza—Thyrza. She must not forget it again.
The elderly maid left Nancy and Letizia in a sombre square room overcrowded with ponderous furniture and papered with dull red flock. On the overmantel was a black marble clock with an inscription setting forth that it was presented to Caleb Fuller, Esquire, by his devoted employees on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. But did she not remember that Caleb had sacked all his employees on that auspicious occasion? Perhaps he had not liked the gift, she thought with a smile. Above the clock hung a large steel engraving of what Nancy at first imagined was intended to represent the Day of Judgment; but on examining the title she found that it was a picture of the firework-display by Messrs. Fuller and Son in Hyde Park on the occasion of the National Thanksgiving for the recovery of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.
“Why does this room smell like blot-paper, muvver?” Letizia inquired.
“Now, darling, I beg of you not to ask any more questions at all. Will you be kind to mother and do that?”
Letizia wriggled one fat leg against the other for a moment.
“Yes,” she whispered at last resignedly.
“There’s a pet,” said Nancy, lifting her on a mahogany chair, the seat of which was covered with horsehair.
“Ouch!” Letizia exclaimed, rubbing her leg. “It’s all fistles, and where my drawses have gone away and left a piece of my leg the fistles have bitten it. Your drawses don’t go away and leave a piece of your leg. So the fistles don’t bite you.”
At this moment the heavy door opened quietly to admit Caleb Fuller, a plump-faced young man with brown curly hair and a smile of such cordial and beaming welcome that Nancy’s heart sank, for of course he would be delighted to accept the responsibility of Letizia’s upbringing.