“But I can’t make ze twain puff-puff wifout,” objected the engine-driver, “an’ we has to go to Bwisbane; det up wif you.” She leaned over the tall back of her locomotive, and made vigorous hits at the legs of it.
[44]
]So vigorous indeed that the chair went over with a crash, precipitating Essie and the poker and tongs and shovel in four different directions.
“Oh dear,” said Esther, and sighed before she attempted to go to the rescue. Essie was always tumbling from somewhere or other and never got much hurt, and really it was terribly hot.
“Oo-oo-oh!” said a very small voice. It quavered for a minute. If the anxiously examined little fat knees had been scratched, it would have broken into a despairing yell, but they were whole, and the motor had misbehaved itself.
“Beast!” she said, picking herself up in a great hurry,—“howid old pig!” Then she seized the poker and beat the prostrate chair with all her small, angered strength.
“Essie,” big Esther said languidly—she had found with thankfulness she need not move from the chair,—“Essie, I shall whip you, if you use naughty words like that.”
“But I was zust dettin’ to Bwisbane—so it is a pig,” Essie maintained. Then she climbed up again, and the journey proceeded.
In the nursery Meg was supposed to be giving lessons to Peter and Poppet, and superintending the more advanced studies of Nellie; for the last nursery governess had left suddenly, and the Captain had [45] ]professed himself unable to afford another until the next quarter.
Meg used to provide herself with a book during these daily struggles, to be indulged in at times when her supervision was not required. It had been an “improving” book for the last month, for she had lately been finding out how wofully ignorant she was when she talked to the young man who had listened to her playing last night. To-day it was Browning, because he had looked horrified to find she never read any of his poems, on the plea that he was acknowledged to be difficult to understand.
It was a pity she chose “Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial” for her first essay, especially as it was such a hot day; but she had determined to read, dauntlessly, the first poem the book opened at.