"Which is the varlet?"
"The littler one. I do want him to play wiv me."
"Perhaps he will to-morrow."
"D'rectly after breakfas', mind; you promise."
William Wycherly promised, and Herrick went to bed to dream that "Emmund" and "Monkagu" were walking down Holywell arm-in-arm with Umpy dear and Mr. Woolykneeze, and that they all four called at the hotel to take her for a walk in St. John's Gardens.
Next morning Herrick woke very early. Janet, her Scottish nurse, was having a fortnight's holiday, therefore at that time her mother was her sole guardian and attendant. Her bed was in a little dressing-room off that of her mother, the door between the two rooms being left open.
For a little while Herrick was content to sit up and wonder at the floors of the King's Arms Hotel, which are not as ordinary floors, but slope up and down in all sorts of unexpected directions. But she soon got tired of this, and so effectually roused her devoted parents that the three of them were down in the coffee-room and had finished breakfast by half-past eight.
"Now let us go and see your uncle, daddie dear," Herrick suggested as soon as she was lifted down from her chair. It seemed so extraordinary to her that anyone as old as her father should have an uncle, and she never failed to lay great stress upon the pronoun.
"We can't possibly invade them so early as this," Margaret said firmly; "they're probably not downstairs yet."
"Umpy dear thinks they're up and finished breakfast," Herrick remarked in a detached, impersonal tone, "and waiting for me."