'Miss Horatia, my dearie, what are you thinking about? This hot day it's enough to give you your death!' she cried.
'Oh Nanny, I was so hot, and my head does ache! I really couldn't help it,' exclaimed Horatia.
'You lie down on your bed, missie, and I'll lower the blinds and bathe your head with this spray. You've overdone yourself getting into such a taking with that wretched man,' said the old nurse soothingly, as she patted up the pillows for her charge and lowered the green sun-blinds.
'He wasn't a wretched man; he had nothing to do with it. I touched the high-speed gear, I tell you, and poor Tom Fox was as frightened as any one.'
'I wasn't speaking of him. I know he wasn't to blame. And I'm talking of some one else, as you very well know, whom there's no living in peace with; and I know what you're going to say, Miss Horatia—that he's our host, and my better, which he may be the first, but I don't know so much about his being the second, for my father wouldn't have demeaned himself by such language to any man, let alone before women. And as I'm speaking I may as well say it all out, which is that if the master and mistress had known what kind of place we were coming to they'd never have allowed it. And if I write and tell them'——
'Tell them what, pray?' interrupted Horatia.
'What kind of a man Mr Clay is, which no one has a good word for him; and however you manage to keep him in good temper, Sykes says, he doesn't know,' wound up Nancy.
'I don't want to know what Sykes says; and if you can't talk of more agreeable things than that I'd rather you went away and left my headache to cure itself. I'm only tired after looking all the morning at machines turning round,' announced Horatia.
'And whatever you can find to please you in that passes me. Sykes says those woollen-mills are all one like another, and hot, dirty, greasy places!' declared Nancy.
'I believe you've fallen in love with Sykes,' said Horatia wickedly.