Boy was still meditatively concerned with the looping of the gold chain.
“Leave Muzzy?” he queried. “Wha’ for?”
“What for?” echoed his mother. “To go with Miss Letty—all by your own self—and no kind good Muzzy to take care of you!”
Boy stopped twisting the gold chain. Things began to look serious. He put one rosy finger into his rosier mouth, and started to consider the question. “No kind good Muzzy to take care of you.” Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir was her own trumpeter on this occasion. That she was a “kind good Muzzy” was entirely her own idea. If Boy had been able to express himself with thorough lucidity, he would most probably have given the palm for “kindness and goodness,” and “taking care of him,” to the servant Gerty, rather than to Muzzy. But his little heart told him he ought to love his Muzzy best of all—and yet—how about “Kiss-Letty”? He hesitated.
“Me loves Muzzy vezy much,” he murmured, lowering his pretty eyes,—while his sensitive little underlip began to quiver—“But me loves Kiss-Letty too. Me would like out wiz Kiss-Letty!”
And having thus taken courage to declare his true sentiments, he felt more independent, and raised his golden head with a curious little air of defiance and appeal intermingled. Just then a diversion occurred in the entrance of the servant Gerty, carrying a jug.
“Oh, here is the milk at last!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a sigh of relief. “Now we can have tea. Gerty, what do you think?—here is Miss Leslie wanting to take Boy to stay with her for a few days! Did ever you hear of such a thing!”
Gerty sniffed her usual sniff, which as she gave it, almost amounted to an enigma.
“I should let him go, ’m, if I were you, ’m,” she said, whereat Miss Letty could have embraced her. “He ain’t doin’ no good ’ere, with the master on in his tearin’ tantrums an’ swillin’ whisky fit to bust hisself, an’ really there’s no tellin’ what might happen. Oh yes, ’m,—I should let him go, ’m!”
“Would you really?” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir rose and lolled herself lazily along to the tea-table—“Well!—Do you want him to-day, Letitia?”