“Work rests as well as tires folks,” answered nurse, looking wise.
“Tell me what you want me to do, please?” said the little girl, who knew quite well whither all this was tending.
“Well, dear, I thought you might like to finish the tail of Master Charley’s big kite. It is all done but the tail, and if they had that to fly, they would play in the fields with it all the while the room was being done; but it’s a good hour’s work it wants at the tail, and they would be so pleased to come in and find it done. Shall I bring you the paper and the string?”
Winifred’s face put on its little wearied, fretful look. She did not speak crossly, only as if she felt it rather hard to be asked or expected to do things for other people—“little silly things,” as she said to herself, when her head was so full of the great things she meant to do.
“I don’t know how to make kite-tails, nursey.”
“I could show you.”
“I feel tired. The boys can do it themselves quite well. I don’t think I could make a kite-tail and do my thinking too.”
“Is your thinking very important, Miss Winnie?”
“Yes, very.”
So nurse went away, and Winnie was left alone; but somehow or other the thinking did not seem to get on. A little puzzled frown began to pucker the child’s forehead, and before long Winifred was talking slowly to herself, rather as if she was arguing with somebody, who certainly was not to be seen.