"You are Nurse's sister, aren't you, please?" I asked, going up to her, and once more tendering my hand. "I wanted to see you very much."
"Now just to think of that, Jemima! did you ever?" cried Mrs. Buckle.
"La!" said Jemima; in acknowledgment of which striking remark, I bent my head, and said,
"How do you do, Jemima?" adding, almost without an instant's pause, "Please take me away, Nurse! I am so very tired."
By one immediate and unbroken action, Mrs. Bundle cut her way through our hospitable friends and the scattered rolls of leather and other trade accessories in the shop, and conveyed me into an arm-chair in the sitting-room upstairs, where I sat, the tears running down my face for very weakness.
I had longed for the novelty of a residence above a saddler's shop; but now, too weary for new experiences, I was only conscious that the stairs were narrow, the room dingy and vulgar after the rooms at home, and as I wept I wished I had never come.
At this day, I am glad that I had the courtesy to restrain my feelings, and not to damp the delighted welcome of Nurse and her friends by an insulting avowal of my disappointment. I really was not a spoilt child; and indeed, the insolent and undisciplined egotism of many children "now-a-days," was not often tolerated by the past generation. As I sat silent and sad, Nurse Bundle ransacked her bag, muttering, "What a fool I be, to be sure!" and anon produced a flask of wine, from which she filled a wine-glass with a very big leg, which was one of the chimney ornaments. I emptied it in obedience to her orders, and in a few minutes my tears ceased, and I began to take a more cheerful view of the wallpaper and the antimacassars.
"What a pretty cat!" I said, at last. The said cat, a beauty, was lying on the hearthrug.
"Isn't it a beauty, love?" said Nurse Bundle; "and look, my dear, at your own little dog lying as good as gold in the rocking-chair, and not so much as looking at puss."
Rubens did not quite deserve this panegyric. He lay in his chair without touching puss, it is true; but he kept his eye firmly and constantly fixed upon her, only restrained from an attack by my known objection to such proceedings, and by the immovable composure of the good lady herself. Half a movement of encouragement on my part, half a movement of flight on the cat's, and Rubens would have been after her. All this was so plainly expressed in his attitude, that I burst out laughing. Rubens chose to take this as a sound to the chase, and only by the most peremptory orders could I induce him to keep quiet. As to the cat, I saw one convulsive twitch of the very tip of her tail, eloquent of wrath; otherwise she never moved.