“He’s a fine little chap,” said Jupp affably, conceiving a better opinion of the nurse from her change of manner as well as from noticing, now that her temporary excitement had evaporated, that she was a young and comely woman with a very kindly face. “He told me as how he were going to Lun’non.”
“Did he now?” she exclaimed admiringly.
“He’s the most owdacious young gen’leman as ever was, I think; for he’s capable, young as he is, not long turned four year old, of doin’ a’most anything. Look now at all them things of his as he’s brought from home!”
“That were his luggage like,” observed Jupp, smiling and showing his white teeth, which contrasted well with his black beard, making him appear very nice-looking really, the nurse thought.
“The little rogue!” said she enthusiastically, hugging the mite again with such effusion that Jupp wished he could change places with him, he being unmarried and “an orphan man,” as he described himself, “without chick or child to care for him.”
“He ought to be a good ’un with you a looking after him,” he remarked with a meaning glance, which, although the nurse noticed, she did not pretend to see.
“So he is—sometimes, eh, Master Teddy?” she said, bending down again over the mite to hide a sudden flush which had made her face somehow or other crimson again.
“Ess,” replied the hero of the occasion, who, soothed by all these social amenities passing around him, quickly put aside his stolid demeanour and became his little prattling self again.
However, such was his deep foresight that he did not forget to grasp so favourable an opportunity for settling the initial difficulty between himself and nurse in the matter of the kitten, which had led up logically to all that had happened, and so prevent any misunderstanding on the point in future.
“Oo won’t tate way kitty?” he asked pleadingly, holding up with both hands the struggling little animal, which Jupp had incontinently dropped from his knee when he rose up, on the door of the waiting-room being suddenly opened and the impromptu picnic organised by the mite and himself brought to an abrupt termination, by the unexpected advent of the nurse on the scene.