Kitty said in a very low and frightened voice, “Will you come, please?” and the three children went upstairs.
They went through the cheerful schoolroom, where a fire was blazing brightly, and a lamp making a pleasant glow on the centre-table, and where there was a fascinating basket, out of which a bull-terrier raised his head and growled, and another basket with a cat and a heap of kittens in it; and there was a huge cage in the window in which swung a parrot, who called out the moment he saw them, “Here comes the naughty girl—here comes the naughty girl!” Nan, notwithstanding her misery, would have given worlds to rush to the bull-terrier’s basket to examine its pups, or to the cat’s basket to look at the kittens, or to laugh when Poll the parrot said, “Here comes the naughty girl!” But she did not dare to do any of these things, and she was led swiftly past the impertinent bird, and the dog, and the cat, into her own little room.
Nan’s room opened out of the pretty bedroom where the sisters slept, and there was a fire here also, and a nice white bed, and pretty furniture, and even a few flowers on the dressing-table; and nurse, a stout, shrewd-looking woman, was standing in the room; and there was a jug of hot water on the washing-stand. The moment Nan appeared, nurse spoke to the little girls.
“Now go away, my dears,” she said. “I will look after Miss Esterleigh. Come, miss, you would like me to wash your face and hands, would you not?”
What reply Nan made the little sisters did not hear, for they found themselves pushed out into the schoolroom and the door was shut.
“Oh Nora, what do you think of her?” said Kitty.
“Well,” replied Nora, “I suppose it is because she is unhappy, but she looks rather cross.”
“I do not think she is really. Did you see how her eyes danced when Sally growled?”
“Sally has very bad manners,” said Nora.
“And, oh Noney, Noney, was it not shocking of Poll to say, ‘Here comes the naughty girl’? She will think always now, to her dying day, that he meant her.”