"Well, look here," said Camilla, sitting down on the stool, and putting a pleading note in her voice, "will you arrange all this for me? I don't want to let this girl slip through my fingers."
She looked over her shoulder at this juncture; the door was half open, and they caught the sound of the children returning.
"Well, have you been good little people?" she called aloud, and she got up briskly and went to the door. "I hope you are not tired, Miss Graniger? Oh, my dear! What are you doing? You must not carry that big, big, little lump!"
Baby had climbed up into Caroline's arms, and had her arms about the girl's neck, her head was cuddled on Caroline's shoulder.
"I is so awful tired, mammy," she said plaintively. Then Betty chimed in—
"I telled her a heap of times she was not to ask poor Caroline to carry her, but"—with a shrug of her shoulders—"you know what Baby is. The most onstinant creature in the world."
But Baby only smiled, and kissed Caroline.
Even when her mother tried to entice her away, she clung to the girl affectionately. So Camilla went up to the nursery, also scolding tenderly as she went.
She wanted to take Miss Graniger down to have tea with her, but the children opposed this so strenuously that she had to give way.
She did not leave them till she saw them seated at the table luxuriating in all sorts of delicacies.