"Did she? I had forgotten that."
"Yes—with the result that she was not able to take her fair share of nursing the child, and I accordingly installed a nurse."
"Yes, I remember—a bonny girl, with a voice as soft as the coo of a wood-pigeon."
"Just so. Well, I—or rather Mrs. Carstairs—had a pitched battle with Tochatti before she would consent to Nurse Trevor being engaged; and the girl herself told me that the woman did her very best to make her life unbearable while she was at Cherry Orchard."
"The deuce she did! But if she were really incapacitated——"
"She was; but with the unreasonableness of women—some women," he corrected himself hastily, "she resented her enforced helplessness, and looking back I can recall very well how she used to scowl at me when I visited Cherry."
"Really! You're not imagining it?"
"I'm not an imaginative person," returned Anstice dryly. "I assure you it was no fancy of mine. She used to answer any questions I put to her with a most irritating sullenness; and once or twice even Mrs. Carstairs reproved her—before me—for her unpleasant manner."
"You think that would be sufficient to account for the animus against you displayed in these letters?"
"Honestly, I do. You see, luckily or unluckily, the child took a great fancy to Nurse Trevor; and being ill and consequently rather spoilt, she behaved capriciously towards her former beloved Tochatti—with the result that the woman hated the nurse—and hated me the more for having introduced her into the household."