"What do you want, my dear?"
A shyness, amounting to terror, had seized upon Ida, and she could hardly find voice to answer.
"If you please, I have brought these for—"
For whom? Ida's pale face burnt crimson as she remembered that after all she did not know the little old lady's name. Perhaps the severe housekeeper was touched by the sight of the black frock, torn as it was, for she said kindly:
"Don't be frightened, my dear. What do you want?"
"These primroses," said Ida, who was almost choking. "They are for Mrs. Overtheway to take to church with her. I am very sorry, if you please, but I don't know her name, and I call her Mrs. Overtheway because, you know, she lives over the way. At least—" Ida added, looking back across the road with a sudden confusion in her ideas, "at least—I mean—you know—we live over the way." And overwhelmed with shame at her own stupidity, Ida stuffed the flowers into the woman's hand, and ran home as if a lion were at her heels.
"Well! Miss Ida," began Nurse, as Ida opened the nursery door (and there was something terrible in her "well"); "if I ever—" and Nurse seized Ida by the arm, which was generally premonitory of her favourite method of punishment—"a good shaking." But Ida clung close and flung her arms round Nurse's neck.
"Don't shake me, Nursey, dear," she begged, "my head aches so. I have been very naughty, I know. I've done everything you can think of; I've crept through the hedge, and been right through the wood, and made a ford, and tumbled into the brook, and waded back, and run all the way home, and been round by the town for fear you should see me. And I've done something you could never, never think of if you tried till next Christmas, I've got some flowers for Mrs. Overtheway, only I did it so stupidly; she will think me a perfect goose, and perhaps be angry," and the tears came into Ida's eyes.
"She'll think you a naughty, troublesome child, as you are," said Nurse, who seldom hesitated to assume the responsibility of any statement that appeared to be desirable; "you're mad on that old lady, I think. Just look at that dress!"
Ida looked, but her tears were falling much too fast for her to have a clear view of anything, and the torn edges of the rent seemed fringed with prismatic colours.