"Yes! and people with soft feet like the—the slippers Nannie wears at night so that I can't hear them. And—and that's all!"
She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet into her mouth.
Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors and look at the hidden treasures.
"May I touch them?"
"Of course, sweetheart!"
"I'm vewy sowwy you didn't win," she said in her old-fashioned way, "because you are vewy, vewy nice. And"—she continued, suddenly harking hack as a child will to a previous remark—"and it is all vewy, vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie lights, and——!"
She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan's waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.
"Yes, darling!" said the man, without a trace of expression in his voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in her chair.
"And—and sometimes there's a black woman. And I'm—I'm fwightened of her 'cause she calls me, and—and—pulls me out of bed by my head."
"How do you mean, darling? Does she catch hold of your hair? It must hurt you dreadfully!"