"You can have your supper," she said. "I will look after baby."
"I thought my missus would like me to take baby to her," said the girl.
"No; I will look after him for the present," said Effie. "Mother is tired, and she must sleep. Run away, Susan, and have your supper, and come back here as quickly as you can."
"Yes, Miss Effie; and I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You 'as a wonderful way with the children, and I only wish I could learn it."
Susan left the room. Pressing the baby's soft curly head against her breast, Effie began to pace up and down with it. The baby was three months old; he was fractious and disinclined to sleep, but when his sister began to purr a soft song into his ear, an old nursery rhyme which her mother had sung to her long ago, his wide-open eyes closed, and he sank off into peaceful slumber.
When she saw that he was quite sound asleep, Effie put him in his cot, drew the cot near the crib where Philip, a dark-eyed little boy of five, lay, and bending down to kiss Phil, said:
"You are to be baby's nurse until Susan comes up; if he wakes or begins to cry, just pat him on his back. I am most anxious that mother should have a quiet time; she is just worn out, and if she hears baby cry she is certain to send for him. Now, Phil, you are a very clever little man when you like—I trust to you to keep baby from crying until Susan comes back!"
"'Es, that I will," replied Phil, in a voice of intense importance. "I do love 'ou, Effie," he said.
Effie kissed him, and softly left the room. She ran downstairs, and began to help the servant to lay supper.
No one could look more bright than Effie as she performed the thousand and one duties which fell to her lot in this poor home. Dr. Staunton was poor, there were six children, Effie was the eldest daughter; it needs no more words to explain her exact position. From morning to night Effie was busy, very busy, doing what she herself called nothing. She was getting discontented with her life. A feeling of discontent had stolen over her ever since her eldest brother George had gone to London, to help his uncle in a large warehouse. For months the dream of her life was to give up the little duties near at hand, and to take some great duties which nobody wanted her to do, far away from home. She was quite prepared for the advice which her friend Dorothy Fraser, who lived all the year round in London, and only came home for the holidays to Whittingham, was able to give her. Effie's conscience was not in the least pricked at the thought of leaving her mother—it seemed to her quite right. "Had she not to make the most of her youth? Why should she spend all her young days in looking after the children, and making things tolerable for her father and mother?"