"Serve her right," said Cherry placidly. "She shouldn't have been so silly as to think any real person was dead. She might have known all the servants would have been howling on the doorstep then!"
The tone in which she made this remarkable statement was too much for Anstice's gravity; and he gave way to a fit of unrestrained laughter which mightily offended his small friend.
"I don't see anything to laugh at," she observed icily. "Seems to me people being dead ought to make you cry 'stead of laugh."
"Quite so, Cherry," returned Anstice, wiping his eyes ostentatiously. "But you see in this case there wasn't anybody dead—at least, so I understood from Mrs. Carstairs."
"Yes, there was, then," returned Cherry, still unforgiving. "I'd gone and killed my best-b'loved Lady Daimler"—christened from her mother's car—"on purpose to make a pretty death-bed for Tochatti—and then she simply flew into a temper—oh, a most dreadful temper, my dear!" At the thought of Tochatti's anger she forgave Anstice's lesser offence, and took him once more into her favour.
"That was too bad, especially as I'm sure Tochatti doesn't, often lose her temper with you," said Anstice with some guile; and Cherry looked at him gravely, without speaking.
"Not with me," she announced presently. "But Tochatti gets awful cross sometimes. She used to be fearful angry with Nurse Marg'ret. Where's Nurse Marg'ret now, my dear?"
"Don't know, Cherry. I suppose she is nursing someone else by this time. Why do you want to know?"
"'Cos I like Nurse Marg'ret," said Cherry seriously. "Tochatti didn't. She made a wax dollie of her once, and she only does that when she doesn't like peoples."
"A wax dollie?" Anstice was honestly puzzled. "My dear child, what do you mean?"