"Well, Master Reggie," began Ponty, as soon as I entered the nursery (I was always Master Reggie to Ponty, just as I was always a boy to Annabel), "this is a piece of news I hear about the rector's adopting two children! It fairly took my breath away when Miss Annabel told me about it."
"I thought it would," I answered, sitting down on one of the comfortable chintz-covered chairs.
"It did; and I said to Miss Annabel, says I, 'No good can come of it, a flying in the face of Providence like that!' I'm surprised at the rector, and him a clergyman too," continued Ponty, as if the majority of rectors were not in Holy Orders.
"Come, come, Ponty," I exclaimed, "you are carrying matters a little too far. I see no flying in the face of Providence in the thing at all. Quite the contrary."
"That is all you know, Master Reggie; twisting things about till you don't know whether you are standing on your head or on your heels."
"Yes, I do know; neither at the present moment. I have you there, Ponty."
But my feeble attempts at humour were as much lost upon Ponty as they were upon Annabel. "I call it flying in the face of Providence to adopt children when you haven't got any," she persisted; "if the rector had been meant to have children he'd have had them, without going and borrowing other folks' leavings. That's what I say. I don't hold with adopting, I never did. Why, there was a woman at Poppenhall when I was a girl, who went and adopted a boy because she'd no children of her own, and when he grew up he murdered her."
This was Ponty at her best. I began to enjoy myself.
"This is interesting," I exclaimed; "but why did he murder her?"
"A judgment on her, I suppose, for adopting him."