She might have known that some day Mamma would come up and find her putting the children to bed.
She had seven. There was Isabel Batty, and Mrs. Farmer's red-haired baby, and Mark in the blue frock in the picture when he was four, and Dank in his white frock and blue sash, and the three very little babies you made up out of your head. Six o'clock was their bed-time.
"You'd no business to touch those baby-clothes," Mamma said.
The baby-clothes were real. Every evening she took them from the drawer in the linen cupboard; and when she had sung the children to sleep she shook out the little frocks and petticoats and folded them in a neat pile at the foot of the bed.
"I thought you were in the schoolroom learning your lessons?"
"So I was, Mamma. But—you know—six o'clock is their bed-time."
"Oh Mary! you told me you'd given up that silly game."
"So I did. But they won't let me. They don't want me to give them up."
Mamma sat down, as if it was too much for her.
"I hope," she said, "you don't talk to Catty or anybody about it."