The others were silent; it was rather a bold proposal.
"She'd like us to, you know," suggested Murtagh. "I think she'd understand about things."
"All right," said Winnie, after considering a minute. "I think that's best. She might know of some plan."
"Let us go, then," said Murtagh. "Whatever we do we ought to be quick about."
It was easy to be quick about getting to the drawing-room door, but there they paused. Then taking their courage in their two hands they somewhat shamefacedly entered the room. Nessa, with a big dictionary in her lap, was sitting reading Italian by the fire, and she paid little attention to their entry.
They none of them knew how to begin, but stood upon the hearth-rug alternately looking at her and glancing inquiringly at each other. The longer the silence lasted the more impossible did it seem to break it. At last Winnie began to poke the fire, and that gave Murtagh courage.
"I say," he began. But then Winnie stopped poking to listen to him, and the dead silence was too disconcerting; he stopped short as suddenly as he had begun.
"What were you going to say?" asked Nessa, raising her eyes from her book. And then in sudden surprise at the perturbed countenances of the children, she exclaimed, "Why, what is the matter?"
"Well," said Murtagh, plunging without further hesitation into his subject, "we don't know what to do, and we want to talk to you. We've been thinking about you, and we thought, you know, that you're different somehow. I mean we thought you'd think true about things instead of only about 'Christian' and 'mischief,' and 'young ladies and gentlemen.' I mean," he continued, contracting his forehead as he puzzled himself with his own attempt to explain, "it's so queer the way people are. If things are kind, or brave, or anything, then they talk about young ladies and gentlemen; and the things seem all wrong, somehow—but they aren't really wrong, you know, all the time; only it makes me get in such a rage."
"I—I don't think I quite understand," said Nessa, fairly bewildered in her attempt to follow the meaning of his somewhat complicated preamble.