Dear old nurse! She comes up rarely. She is radiantly happy with her grocer's man, and I think it grieves her to see me.
To-day it was to tell me that she had an accident with one of the
Sèvres cups, a chip having appeared in the handle.
She almost cried over it.
"Oh! If madam could know!" she said; then, "I dearly wish you would come back just to see how I have kept things," she added.
"Oh, Hephzibah, I will some day, but do not ask me yet! I—I should so miss grandmamma."
"You—you're happy, Miss Ambrosine?" she faltered, timidly. "Madam always knew best, you know. But I had a dream last night of your father, and he shook his fist at us—right there."
"Papa!" I felt startled. Our settled conviction had been so long that he was dead. "You dreamed of papa? Oh! Hephzibah, if he should still be alive!" I cried.
"There, there," she said, uneasily. "It is too late, anyway, my deary, but he'll understand that we could none of us stand against madam—if he should come back, ever. He—he—won't blame us."
I did not ask her what he should blame us for—her, poor soul! for having been unable to keep me with her, free; me for having submitted to the mutilation of my own life. Would papa blame us for this?
Kind, awkward, abrupt papa!