Lancelot, the elder of the two, was just four years old; he had a sweet, rosy, determined little face with a slightly Jewish look about it, his curly brown hair was long enough to fall back over the pillow, and in his fat little hand he grasped a toy horse, which was his inseparable companion night and day. The little girl was much smaller and much more fragile-looking, though in some respects the two were alike. Her baby face looked exquisite now in its perfect peace, and Cecil did not wonder that the nurse’s tears broke forth again as she spoke of the little two-year-old Gwen being sent to school. They were still talking about the matter when Mr. Boniface rejoined them; the lawyer also came in, and, to the nurse’s surprise, even looked at the sleeping children. “Quite human-like,” as she remarked afterward to the cook.
“Don’t you distress yourself about the children,” he said kindly. “It will be all right for them. Probably they will only have to move across the road. We shall know definitely about it to-morrow; but this gentleman has very generously offered to take care of them.”
The nurse’s tearful gratitude was interrupted by a sound from one of the cribs. Lance, disturbed perhaps by the voices, was talking in his sleep.
“Gee-up,” he shouted, in exact imitation of a carter, as he waved the toy-horse in the air.
Every one laughed, and took the hint: the lawyer went back to his work, and Mr. Boniface and Cecil, after a few parting words with the happy servant, recrossed the road to Rowan Tree House.
“Oh, father, it is so very good of you,” said Cecil, slipping her arm into his; “I haven’t been so happy for an age!”
“And I am happy,” he replied, “that it is such a thing as this which pleases my daughter.”
After that there followed a delightful evening of anticipation, and Mrs. Boniface entered into the plan with her whole heart and talked of nursery furniture put away in the loft, and arranged the new nursery in imagination fifty times over—always with improvements. And this made them talk of the past, and she began to tell amusing stories of Roy and Cecil when they were children, and even went back to remembrances of her own nursery life, in which a stern nurse who administered medicine with a forcing spoon figured largely.
“I believe,” said the gentle old lady, laughing, “that it was due to that old nurse of mine that I never could bear theological arguments. She began them when we were so young that we took a fatal dislike to them. I can well remember, as a little thing of four years old, sitting on the punishment chair in the nursery when all the others were out at play, and wishing that Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned.”
“You all sound very merry,” said Roy, opening the door before the laugh which greeted this story had died away.