Presently there was a little stir and the indescribable soft sound a baby makes when it is just waking up. From the room above came sundry bumps and scrapings that proclaimed the cleaning to be in full swing. She darted to the perambulator and looked in; the baby, rosy and warm and adorable looked up at her and smiled. It was too much for Jane-Anne. She forgot Mrs. Cox's instructions that she was on no account to lift the baby out when it woke, but to call her. She seized the small delicious bundle that stretched and cuddled against her and sat down on the low seat close by the book-case.
Baby began to whimper.
Jane-Anne repeated "See-Saw, Margery Daw," but the baby evidently was impervious to the charms of poetry, and the whimper grew a little more decided.
Then there flashed into Jane-Anne's perturbed mind her aunt's instructions: "Turn it face downwards on your knee and pat it gentle." No sooner thought of than done, and it was, apparently, quite successful.
Jane-Anne had just got to a very interesting part of Punch, and she longed to return to it. As the baby was evidently quiet and happy, she felt she might go back to her study of the Great Jester—nurses always were reading—even while they wheeled their prams—so it was all right. She kept one hand on the baby's back to steady it and tried to hold up the volume of Punch with the other, but Punch was heavy and she was not very successful.
Presently a brilliant thought struck her: If Punch was open on the top of the baby, it would fulfil a double purpose, keep the baby from rolling off her knee, and amuse her, Jane-Anne.
It really was a very fascinating Punch.
For a moment Miss Cox was perfectly quiet. The heavy weight across her back petrified her with astonishment. She tried to lift her head to see what it all meant, but some hard substance caught her just in the nape of the neck and prevented her doing anything of the kind.
Such an indignity was not to be borne for an instant.
Miss Cox filled her lungs as well as she could, considering how compressed she was, and gave vent to a good hearty roar of rage and grief that such impertinent persons should be left loose in a naughty world.