“Me tum; Annie tumming too.”
Mrs Willis said nothing, but, holding the little hand, and accompanied by Annie, she went out of the play-room, across the stone hall, and through the baize doors until she reached her own delightful private sitting-room.
There were heaps of pretty things about, and Nan gazed round her with the appreciative glance of a pleased connoisseur.
“Pitty ’oom,” she said approvingly. “Nan likes this ’oom. Me’ll stay here, and so will Annie.”
Here she uttered a sudden cry of rapture—on the floor, with its leaves temptingly open, lay a gayly-painted picture-book, and curled up in a soft fluffy ball by its side was a white Persian kitten asleep.
Mrs Willis whispered something to Annie, who ran out of the room, and Nan knelt down in a perfect rapture of worship by the kitten’s side.
“Pitty tibby pussy!” she exclaimed several times, and she rubbed it so persistently the wrong way that the kitten shivered and stood up, arched its beck very high, yawned, turned round three times, and lay down again. Alas! “tibby pussy” was not allowed to have any continuous slumber. Nan dragged the Persian by its tail into her lap, and when it resisted this indignity, and with two or three light bounds disappeared out of the room, she stretched out her little hands and began to cry for it.
“Turn back, puss, puss—turn back, poor tibby puss—Nan loves ’oo. Annie, go fetch puss for Nan.” Then for the first time she discovered that Annie was absent, and that she was alone, with the exception of Mrs Willis, who sat busily writing at a distant table.
Mrs Willis counted for nothing at all with Nan—she did not consider her of the smallest importance, and after giving her a quick glance of some disdain she began to trot round the room on a voyage of discovery. Any moment Annie would come back—Annie had, indeed, probably gone to fetch the kitten, and would quickly return with it. She walked slowly round and round, keeping well away from that part of the room where Mrs Willis sat. Presently she found a very choice little china jug, which she carefully subtracted with her small fingers from a cabinet, which contained many valuable treasures. She sat down on the floor exactly beneath the cabinet, and began to play with her jug. She went through in eager pantomime a little game which Annie had invented for her, and imagined that she was a little milkmaid, and that the jug was full of sweet new milk; she called out to an imaginary set of purchasers, “Want any milk?” and then she floured some by way of drops of milk into the palm of her little hand, which she drank up in the name of her customers with considerable gusto. Presently, knocking the little jug with some vehemence on the floor she deprived it with one neat blow of its handle and spout. Mrs Willis was busily writing, and did not look up. Nan was not in the least disconcerted; she said aloud—
“Poor tibby zug b’oke,” and then she left the fragments on the floor, and started off on a fresh voyage of discovery. This time she dragged down a large photographic album on to a cushion, and, kneeling by it, began to look through the pictures, flapping the pages together with a loud noise, and laughing merrily as she did so. She was now much nearer to Mrs Willis, who was attracted by the sound, and looking up hastened to the rescue of one of her most precious collections of photographs.