"Nous verrons," I said to myself, as I went upstairs. "If I continue to want to go to parties, no doubt she will have to let me go. I am a fraction too old to be put in a dark closet, or sent to bed for being naughty, and Aunt Edith knows it."
That Wednesday was a very busy day to Mrs. Churchill and Josephine. A wedding reception took up the morning, from which they returned but to dress for a dinner at the Wynkars, and thence returning, made a hurried toilette for the ball. It seemed making rather a toil of pleasure, if one might judge from my aunt's haggard looks, and Josephine's impatient complaints.
There was an anxious contraction on Mrs. Churchill's brow as she came down from the nursery after breakfast, and apparently a struggle in her mind between home duties and social duties, when it became necessary for her to decide about going out. That she sincerely believed in the stringent nature of both, no one could doubt who watched her closely. It was not pleasure that took her away from little Essie that morning; it was a mistaken sense of duty. She had set up for her worship an idol, in whose hard service she had unconsciously come to sacrifice time, ease, and affection, as stoically as many have suffered in a cause whose reward is not altogether seen and ended in this world.
So it was, that, trying to make up for her absence by many injunctions and cautions to those left in charge, she turned her back upon the child for the greater part of the day.
"I hoped," said she, as she paused at the nursery door, in her rustling silk and heavy India shawl, "I hoped that the doctor would have come before I went out, but I really do not see but what you can do as well as I can, Félicie. Pay particular attention to his directions, and send John out immediately for any prescription he may leave for her. And be sure you tell him just how she was yesterday, and how well she slept last night. I don't like," she continued, taking off one glove to feel again of the child's hot forehead, "her having fever again this morning. I thought yesterday she was so much better."
"Oh, madam is too anxious. It is nothing but a little excitement that has brought it on again," said the nurse. "If madam would tell Mademoiselle Esther how very naughty it is for her to cry to go into her cousin's room, and fret and strike me when I try to keep her quiet, perhaps she might mind better. It is that that brings her fever on, madam, I am afraid."
"Now, Esther," said her mother, with authority, "I shall have to punish you if you do so any more. I shall be very angry if you do not mind Félicie to-day, and if you hurt or strike her, remember I shall punish you when I come back—do you hear?"
Esther heard, yes. She sat bolt upright in her little bed, and looked at the speaker with her parched lips parted, and a strange, bewildered expression in her eyes, and a restless movement of her tiny hands. Before the interview was over, however, the startled look had settled into a vacant, listless stare; and a peevish moan, after her mother left the room, was all the evidence she gave of being impressed or alarmed by the injunctions laid upon her. I heard the miserable little complainer unmoved as long as I could; after a while, putting down my book, I went into the nursery. She stretched out her arms, and cried:
"Take me to your room."
"If you will stop crying," I said, taking her up in my arms, and wrapping her dressing-gown about her.