Marie made a pantherine bound across the room, and thrust the book between the mattress and palliasse just as the handle rattled, and a tall, gaunt elderly woman entered the room.
She was not pleasant to look upon, for there was too much suggestion of a draped scaffold erected for the building of a female human figure about her hard square bony form, while her hard face, which seemed to wrinkle only about the forehead, as if it had never smiled since childhood, was not made more pleasant by the depth and darkness of the lines in her brow all being suggestive of the soap and flannel never probing their depths, which was not the case, however, for she was scrupulously clean, even to her blonde cap, and its side whiskers with a sad-coloured flower in each.
“Morning, children,” she said harshly. “Your aunts ’ll be down directly. You ought to be dressed by now.”
“Morning, nurse,” said the girls in chorus.
“Ruth’s so slow,” said Clotilde.
“Then do your hair yourself,” said the woman roughly. “Ruth, child, turn down that bed, and open the window.”
Their actions before her arrival had been those of children; she treated them like children, and they were as obedient and demure now as little girls, while the woman placed a large white jug containing a tablespoon upon the table, and a plain tumbler beside it.
Ruth began to open the bed, and Marie cast anxious eyes at the part where her French novel lay perdu.
“’Tisn’t physic morning again, nurse,” said Clotilde pettishly.
“Yes it is, miss, so don’t you grumble. You know it’s Wednesday as well as I do.”