“Yes, dear.”
“Oh, I’m rather glad. Perhaps you’ll be able soon to take a better room. Are you coming back to live with us, nurse, with your mother and me?”
“No, Piers; but now I’m not going to talk of my own affairs. There is another thing I must say. You are not to set my mother guessing your secret.”
“But why, why?” asked the child in astonishment. “It amuses me and it keeps me from telling it. I’m very dull, you know, very dull indeed. I, who have so much, am now given so little. If it were not that Mrs. Ives takes me out two or three times daily, and if it were not that I always go——”
“What?” said Clara.
“Oh, now you are looking really cross. I always walk past Ashley Mansions. I take Mrs. Ives there every day. I stop in front of No. 12, and when I’m there, just at the opposite side of the street, I make her guess harder than ever.”
“This must be put a stop to,” said Clara under her breath. “I have not come back a moment too soon.”
“What is the matter with you, nurse? How queer you look!”
“There’s nothing the matter, dear. Oh, yes, what you did was quite natural, and I—I am not cross. You are going to have a change soon, dear, darling little Piers, a splendid change. Now run into the bedroom and send my mother in.”
“It is fun,” said the boy. “You have secrets with me and secrets with your mother.” He strutted into the bedroom.