Choking down a rebellious sob of disappointment, the child faces nurse's wrath with a brave heart. He says, "I'm very, very sorry, nursie," so humbly, when her half-angry, half-tearful scolding is over, and his winsome face looks so sweet in its unusual gravity, that her loving old heart melts at once.
She hugs and kisses "her boy" again and again; telling him "not to go and get into mischief like this, and never to give her such another scare."
Three days later Phil's father comes home.
Nurse finds an early opportunity for telling him the story of his little son's escapade, adding, however, a sequel of which Phil knows nothing. For on the previous day, Dame Christy's daughter had sent up a message to the nursery, "Might she trouble Mrs. Nurse to step downstairs for a minute?"
And on her entering the housekeeper's room, she had displayed a large handkerchief, having an artistic and warlike border of quarrelsome cats and dogs. With tears in her eyes the young woman spoke of the dear little master's gift and the hard labour it must have cost him.
"And we should never have knowed who did it, but for this, which told the tale. For he came and went so quiet, that mother she thought it must have been a dog as had got into her room, never speaking a word, and coming right away without any one knowing! His handkercher I knowed directly, 'cause he showed it to me only the other day. He's a rale little gentleman, isn't he now?"
Nurse had wisely begged Dame Christy's daughter not to mention, or let her mother speak of the gift, but to leave the child in happy ignorance that his good deed had been discovered. She instinctively felt that "her boy" who would "do good by stealth" would "blush to find it fame."
But now she tells her master all about it, dwelling with pardonable pride on the "sweet nature of the bairn."
That same evening Phil's father stands by his boy's crib and looks down at the bonny face as it lies on the pillow, while he strokes the curly crop with a loving hand.
The blue eyes are just a little bit sleepy. Nurse has tucked him up for the night, and drawn down the blind. But they are not too sleepy to shine with love and admiration as they look up into the kind face bending over him.