This wise remark did not provoke any ridicule from Queenie at this moment, as it would usually have done. She had other things to think of now.
“Why has the little boy gone to the Manor House?” she asked.
“I suppose the Squire asked him there. You see he has no friends to take care of him—at least he cannot find them yet. The Squire is a very kind man.”
“Mamma doesn’t like him,” remarked Queenie. “She tells people he is very unsociable, and does not treat her with proper respect. I think he looks a nice old man. I met him once when I was out on my pony, and had run away from William and lost him. He picked up my whip for me because I’d dropped it, and when I thanked him, he smiled and looked quite kind, though in church he is always so grave and solemn. But I can’t think why he should take a little fisherman’s boy to live in his house.”
The nurse smiled a little.
“Who told you he was a fisherman’s boy, Miss Queenie?”
Queenie tossed her little curly head with the air of one who half resents such a question.
“Why, of course he is! everybody knows that. He lived ever so many days in that dirty little hut with the Wickhams. I saw him one day on the sands, playing with David. Only quite a common boy could possibly think of doing that!”
The nurse smiled again.
“Well, Miss Queenie, however that may be, there are other opinions about the little boy. Anyway, he is living at the Manor House now, and Mrs. Pritchard does not think it beneath her to wait upon him,—fisherman’s boy or no.”