"Listen to me, children," said their mother, entering the nursery, when playtime had begun; "Nurse has gone to lie down. She isn't very well this afternoon. So at four o'clock put everything away neatly; then make yourselves tidy, and come downstairs, where you may have tea with me."
Robert and Lucy said they were sorry for Nurse, but they smiled, and hopped about with delight at the treat of tea downstairs. They promised to do as they were told, and with muffled footsteps hurried on the landing to open the gate and let their mother out of their domain, and quietly closed it to keep themselves in. Then they settled down in the nursery to "Loto;" but as Lucy always won, Robert tired of it. Card houses didn't answer either, because it amused Robert not to build them, but to shake the table when Lucy's structures were in course of erection.
Their mother, busily writing in the drawing-room, began to wonder why the children didn't come downstairs; and tea was just being brought in, when suddenly screams and cries were heard issuing from the nursery, and she rushed upstairs in alarm.
There she found the nursery littered with things, chairs in unusual places, some overturned, and Lucy lying on the floor crying, with a cut on her lip, which was bleeding. Robert had both stockings torn, and was ruefully rubbing his knees. The little girl was more frightened than hurt.
"Whatever has happened, Robert?" exclaimed their mother as she helped Lucy to her feet, and comforted her.
"I was hunting," he began to explain, "and she was the gazelle, and I was chasing her from rock to rock——"
"Jumping from the table on to the chairs and back again," added Lucy in further explanation, "and we both tumbled down!"
"Serve you both right for being so disobedient as to jump on the furniture," replied their mother, with placid satisfaction that matters were no worse. "You ought to have been all tidied up, and downstairs by now."
"It isn't time yet, surely, Mother!" The three turned instinctively towards the Cuckoo clock. It had stopped at three minutes to four.
"There now, Lucy, you silly!" cried her brother; "if you hadn't forgotten to wind it up, we shouldn't have had that beastly tumble, and shouldn't have been late for tea."