"You are a little monkey, Baba," she said, "and a flatterer. You mustn't call Christina a pretty lady. She isn't a bit pretty, and she's only just your nurse."
"Baba will call Christina just 'zactly what she likes," the child answered sturdily, enunciating her words with the clearness often found in an only child who is constantly with grown-up people. "Christina's a very pretty lady, and Baba loves her."
"Baba's a goose, and we must put on our things and go out in the sunshine and see what we can find in these nice lanes." She put the child off her lap, and, going into an adjacent room, brought out the red cloak in which she had first seen her, and wrapped it round Baba's graceful little form, drawing the hood over the golden curls.
Barely a fortnight had gone by since Christina had first entered Lady Cicely's service, after an interview which had ended precisely as Rupert had laughingly declared it would end, in the engagement of Christina as Baba's nurse. The references the girl had produced from her late employer, Mrs. Donaldson, from an old clergyman who had known her in Devonshire, and from her father's solicitor, had seemed to Cicely to justify her in taking this step, even though the Donaldsons were in Canada, the old clergyman dead, and the solicitor gone to South Africa.
"She looks genuine; I am sure she is genuine," the little lady said afterwards to Rupert; "and she was so overwhelmed with delight and gratitude at the idea of coming to us."
"No doubt she was," Rupert responded drily; "well! no great harm can come of giving her a month's trial. I am glad you had the saving grace to suggest that. And during the month you will be able to see what she is made of."
But the month had not fallen out quite as Rupert had naturally supposed that it would. Lady Cicely, driven nearly distracted by a scare of scarlet fever in the near neighbourhood, and unable to use Bramwell Castle, which was in the builder's hands, had sent Christina and Baba off, almost at a moment's notice, to Graystone. In this remote hamlet on a remote Sussex border, Mrs. Nairne, an old servant of the Staynes family, owned a small farmhouse, and also received lodgers; and here, for the past ten days, Christina and her little charge had been rejoicing in the country sights and sounds, which even in early December had a fascination all their own.
To Baba, the farmyard was an unfailing source of delight; and to Christina, the great spaces of moorland, the deep lanes, the woods whose soft brown hues gave colour to the hillsides, were a welcome change from London streets, and the squalor of London lodgings. To the girl who for so long had been tossing on a sea of struggle and privation, her quiet life at Graystone was like a haven of rest; and her one passionate prayer was, that at the end of her month of probation, she might still find favour in Lady Cicely's eyes, and keep the situation which seemed to her a more delightful one than she had ever dared to hope for in her wildest dreams. With the help of a little pony cart, she and the child could make quite lengthy excursions about the country side, and Christina often found herself wondering why it was the fashion to talk as if there were no beauties to be found in the country in winter time. She revelled in the great sweeps of moorland that rolled away to far hills on the horizon, hills scarcely less blue than the soft blue of the winter sky. And, if the moorlands were no longer clad in their robe of purple heather, or pale pink ling, the duns and browns of heath and bracken, the dark green of fir-trees, and the brightly tinted leaves of the bilberry plants offered no lack of colour. On the oaks in the lanes bright brown leaves still hung; and the trees that were leafless—delicate birches, sturdy ashes, smooth-stemmed beeches, made so dainty a lacework of bare boughs against their background of sky, that the leaflessness was in itself beautiful. The sunlight poured a flood of radiance on the upland road, as Christina and Baba jogged peacefully along it, in the wake of the small black pony, who meandered on at his own pace, just as the fancy took him. Larks sang in the sunlight; in the copse under the hill the thrushes were already beginning to learn their songs of spring; and Christina, drinking in all the loveliness about her, laughed aloud for sheer gladness of heart.
They had driven for some distance along the main road, when they came to a spot where four roads met, and towards one of them Baba pointed a fat forefinger.
"Let's go along there," she said; "it's such a ducky wee road, and there's a pond."