“Well, I will never say again that children can’t remember back to two years old,” said nurse.
“I think I could not have been older than that when I cut off the fingers of Miss Oliver’s gloves,” said Anna. “Do you remember that, Mary?”
Mary laughed heartily at the recollection.
“What a little rogue you looked, Anna, peeping from under the table between the folds of the cloth; while Miss Oliver was so busy talking to mamma about the patterns, and unrolling and drawing on her gloves in an absent fit! And poor mamma tried to look grave, and could not, when the fingers’ ends came through.”
“Miss Anna was always the child for fun,” said nurse.
“There was as much fright as fun in that joke, however,” said Anna. “When I had done my cutting, I could not roll up the gloves again for a long time; and I felt so sure of being punished, that I heartily wished the finger tips on again. I shall never forget how glad I was to see mamma laugh.”
Mrs. Rickham turned away and sighed, and Mary and Anna looked at one another with sadness in their faces.
“I know, nurse,” said Mary, “that you do not like to hear us talk in this way about mamma. But only consider how very little we remember of her, and how trifling that little is. We only talk about it because we would not forget even this much.”
“It is all very natural, my dears; but when I think about her, as I do every day, and when I see how like her you are, Miss Anna especially, I can’t help grieving when I think how much more chance there would be of your growing up to be like her, if you could remember for yourselves what she was.”
Here nurse Rickham stood and looked at the young ladies from head to foot, and began to smooth down their rough hair with her hand. They knew well enough what would come next to be anxious to make their escape; so, to avoid a lecture on tidiness, one ran to help little Tommy to pump, and the other to gather some flowers for papa.