"——was——" Nelly's finger went to her mouth. Her glance wavered, wandered tortuously along the floor, and finally and suddenly focussed the tea equipage.
"——in the middle of my tea." Louder and with sudden confidence as the full nature of the outrage was realized, "Weally was in the middle of my tea."
Lady Lulford smiled abstractedly. Leslie's lips moved. The mother drew her little girl closer.
"You shall have your tea presently, dear," she said, "but I want you to listen to me first. Now, tell me," she seemed to steady her voice, "how would you like to go into the country with your aunt and Cousin Leslie?"
Nelly's eyes grew big and round. "And mother?" added she, joining the palms of her hands, baby-wise, with stiff outspread fingers.
"No, dear. Mother must stay in London, because she has so much to do."
There was an agitation of the black curls, and from under them a most decided negative evolved itself.
"Oh, but my precious," the mother pleaded, as that other mother may have pleaded before the judgment seat of the great wise king; "just for a while; to see the green trees, and the moo-cows, and the bunnies, and, and——"
"The deer," said Lady Lulford, raising the conversation to a higher and, shall we say, ancestral level.
"Great—big—stags, baby," the cousin broke in, with her eager, unsteady voice, "great big stags with horns like this," and she made a pair with fingers that were almost as fleshless.