"What a darling kiddy he was," she laughed tenderly. "No wonder his mother loved him so."
"He ought to be a fine boy. His mother paid a big price for him," Grandma told her.
But Nanny didn't hear. She had just discovered that there were two of those boy and hen pictures and she wondered if—
Just then Grandma spied a hen in her lavender bed and went off to shoo her out. And while her back was so providentially turned Nanny Ainslee, an honorable, world-famous diplomat's only daughter, coolly and deliberately tucked the picture of a little boy and his pet hen down into the bosom of her gown.
Shortly after Nanny said she guessed she'd have to be going, that it was getting late and that she had had an argument with her father just before she came and had been short an answer. But that she had just this minute thought of something to say.
Grandma let her go without a word because she thought that, like herself, the girl had seen Cynthia's boy coming down the hill and wished with girlish shyness to be out of the house when he came. But Nanny had not seen him, had not been watching the roads, so taken was she with her guilty secret. Her surprise when she almost ran into him was genuine enough.
His face lighted at sight of her.
"I spent the afternoon up on the hill. I thought maybe I should find you there. It was rather lonesome."
He had evidently forgotten and forgiven her rudeness on the hilltop that day when they had been up there together. Nanny was suddenly so happy and confused that she could think of nothing to say except to make the formal little confession:
"I have been visiting Grandma Wentworth and looking at pictures of you. You were a mighty nice little boy in those days."