She need not have distressed herself. I felt keenly enough Robbie's daytime fear of me, but that I should inspire horrible dreams of red-haired women bending over his bed at night, filled me with a real terror of the child. I would not, for anything, have come near to him.
I stopped and waited for Mary.
She looked as fresh and sturdy as some hardy blooming plant, nothing “peaky” about her that I could see: short and trim with round, loyal eyes, round, ruddy face, a pugnacious nose, and a bull-dog's jaw—not pretty, certainly, but as trusty and delightful to look at as health, and honesty, and cleanliness could make her. I rejoiced in her that morning, and I have rejoiced in her ever since, even during that worst time when her trust in me wavered a little, a very little.
“Mary,” I said, “can you give me five minutes or so? I have a good deal to say to you.”
She glanced back at Robbie. He was busy, playing with some sticks on the gravel path.
“Yes, miss. Certainly.” And I had her quiet, complete attention.
“You aren't frightened out of your senses, then, this morning?” I asked.
She did not smile back at me, but she shook her head. “No, Miss Gale,” she said sturdily, “though I did see thet thing come out of the nursery plain enough. But it might have been Mrs. Brane's Angora cat. Times like that when one is a bit upset, why, things can look twice as big as they really are, and, as for Robbie's nightmare, why, as I make it out, it means just nothing but that some time, when he was a mere infant maybe, some red-haired woman give him a great scare. He's a terrible nervous little fellow, anyways, and terrible secret in his ways. At first, I could n't take to him, somehow, he was so queer. But now—why,”—and here she did smile with an honest radiance,—“it would take more'n a ghost to scare me away from takin' care of him. And a scared ghost, at that.”
“Did you know that Delia and Annie and Jane are all leaving us to-day?”
Mary put up her hands and opened her blue eyes. “My Lor'! The poor, silly fools! Excuse me, Miss Gale, but I never did see such a place for cowards. Them housekeepers and their nerves!”