"But, I shall like to see your niece about the house," said Mr. Wycherly. "It will be pleasant to have a young girl growing up in our midst, good for me and for the boys."
Again Mrs. Dew gave Mr. Wycherly that queer look, half-scornful, half-admirative.
"You mustn't think, sir, that there's any real 'arm in Jane-Anne," she said earnestly. "There's nothing of the minx about her, I will say that; but—I don't know how to put it without being hard on the child, and yet it wouldn't be fair to you, sir, to let her come without telling you——"
Again Mrs. Dew paused and Mr. Wycherly looked rather anxious.
"She do make a sort of stir wherever she do go and that's the long and short of it." And Mrs. Dew relapsed into broadest Gloucestershire again as she blurted out this startling fact.
"Stir," Mr. Wycherly repeated, "stir. Do you mean that she is a particularly noisy child?"
"No, sir, not that. Jane-Anne isn't that; but she does things no other child ever thinks of doing and you can't seem to guard against it. The very first month she was at the asylum, she went and put 'er foot through a staircase window trying to see some soldiers as was passing. They had a board meeting about it."
Mr. Wycherly laughed. "It is unusual to put one's foot through a window, but surely that was an accident and not a moral offence?"
"It was a staircase window, as stretched all down one side of that wing," Mrs. Dew said solemnly, "and the bannisters was up against it, and Jane-Anne she leant over cranin' 'er 'ead to see them soldiers, and she lost 'er balance and swung back and drove 'er foot right through and cut 'er leg so it bled dreadful."
"Poor child," said Mr. Wycherly, "that's one thing she is quite safe from here. There will be no temptation for her to put her feet through any windows. Has she lost both her parents, Mrs. Dew?"