“There is a boy now at the Manor House,” remarked the nurse, threading her needle afresh.
Queenie looked up, all interest and vivacity.
“A boy at the Manor House!” she repeated. “Who is he? I didn’t know the Squire had any boys.”
“Neither he has, Miss Queenie. Poor man, he lost them all. The little boy he has with him now is the one, you know, who drifted ashore after the last storm, who doesn’t know who he is nor where he came from, poor little fellow.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“He can’t remember; he’s forgotten it all. His head was hurt somehow, and when he got better he’d forgotten everything he knew about himself.”
“How funny!” cried Queenie. “I wonder what it feels like to forget everything like that.”
The nurse shook her head, and Queenie went on with her own train of thought.
“I think it would be rather nice to forget everything and begin again quite fresh. It would be so funny. I should like to forget all my lessons, and to go on forgetting them, so that by and by people would say it was no good teaching me any more, and I should do just as I liked all day.”
“You would soon be very glad to go back to your lessons again, Miss Queenie,” answered the nurse, quietly. “There is nothing in the world so dull as having no regular employment.”