"I am so tired of washing up," it said, "it wasn't fair of Dot. She had four plates for her breakfast—I only had one. She might remember I've to go to school as well as her."
Then Mrs. Bruce advanced one foot towards the house, and in thought wielded the tea-towel and attacked the trayful of cups and saucers that she knew would be awaiting the tea-towel.
It was Cyril's voice that arrested her. It came from the kitchen too.
"What's washing up!" said Cyril contemptuously. "Washing up a few cups and spoons—pooh! How'd you like to be me and have to clean all the knives, I wonder."
Whereat Mrs. Bruce relinquished thoughts of the tea-towel. It would never do, she told herself, to assist Betty and leave poor Cyril unaided. "And I couldn't clean knives," she said.
But she ran indoors to her bedroom, whence came an angry crying voice. Six-year-old Nancy was, in the frequent intervals that occurred in the doing of her hair, frolicking about the small hot bedroom and trying frantically to catch the interest of the thumb-and-cot-disgusted baby.
"Do your hair nicely," said Mrs. Bruce to her second youngest daughter. "I will take baby into the garden. Button your shoes and ask Betty to see that your ears are clean. And your nails. A little lady always has nice nails."
She carried her baby away, kissing her neck and cheeks and hands, and telling her, as she had told them all, from Dorothy downwards, that there never had been such a baby in the world before.
And she slipped her into the much used hammock under the old apple tree, and left her to play with her toes and fingers, whilst she went back to her violets and roses singing—
"Rock-a-bye, Baby on a tree top,
There you are put, there you must stop."