Meg lit the night-light and switched off the light, when a melancholy voice began to chant:
"My Ayah always dave me a choccly."
Now there was no infant in London less deserving of a choccly at that moment than troublesome little Fay. "Nursery Hygiene" proclaimed the undeniable fact that sweetmeats last thing at night are most injurious. Duty and Discipline and Self-Control should all have pointed out the evil of any indulgence of the sort. Yet Meg, with all her theories quite fresh and new, and with this excellent opportunity of putting them into practice, extracted a choccly from a box on the chest of drawers; and when the voice, "like broken music," announced for the third time, "My Ayah always dave me a choccly," "So will this Ayah," said Meg, and popped it into the mouth whence the voice issued.
There was a satisfied smacking and munching for a space, when the voice took up the tale:
"Once Tony had thlee——"
But what it was Tony once had "thlee" of Meg was not to know that night, for naughty little Fay fell fast asleep.
For a week Tony bathed his sister every night. Neither Jan nor Meg felt equal to facing and going through again the terrors of that first night without Ayah. Little Fay was quite good—she permitted Meg to undress her and even to put her in the little bath, but once there she always said firmly, "Tony wass me," and Tony did.
Then he burned his hand.
He was never openly and obstreperously disobedient like little Fay. On the whole he preferred a quiet life free from contention. But very early in their acquaintance Jan had discovered that what Tony determined upon that he did, and in this he resembled her so strongly that she felt a secret sympathy with him, even when such tenacity of purpose was most inconvenient.