“Oh, no, m’m,” said Ruth, “not at all. It wasn’t that. But where there is children there is so much that has got to be done.”
“Yes,” I said thoughtfully, “I see your point. The same thing has occurred to me. He gives orders, doesn’t he? Is rather emphatic—is that what you meant?”
“Oh, well, m’m,” she replied, “of course you would give the orders just the same in the nursery as elsewhere. It’s your place, and I like to have you do it. I’m sure I should be the last to wish to direct. Indeed, I shouldn’t care to take any responsibility. But where there is children you can’t pick and choose what is to be done in the same way as where there is only a lady, can you, m’m? They have to be considered, don’t they?”
“Yes, Ruth,” I said, “I quite see your idea, and I think you are right to marry, you will feel much freer.”
But I had not the least intention that she should marry yet. Before the month was up she had decided that Mullins could hardly give her, as yet, the comforts to which she was accustomed, therefore the marriage was postponed. Still, I was conscious henceforth of the sword over my head, and it was all Tom’s fault.
He had already annoyed us all by not being born on the day originally fixed. He seemed preoccupied and in a hurry when he arrived, and of course the house was all upset. He made the best of things, waiting patiently on the sofa as if we had made the muddle, whereas, in fact, he was entirely to blame. Anne, two years later, behaved quite differently. She entered the date in her pocket-book, stopped glory-trailing when the clock struck, and came down buttoning on a pink skin several sizes too large.
I was sorry for Tom from the bottom of my heart. He had some natural dignity, which he needed in the presence of the women who preyed upon his person and searched mercilessly for his soul. They commented upon his personal appearance, his habits, and his human weaknesses, until I blushed for them and for him. They made him look absurd in the street, dressed in a shawl pinned tightly round him in the shape of a Virginia Ham, and a drunken-looking bonnet that lay cocked over one eye, leaving a draughty space at the back of the neck. When he laughed they either attributed it to a defective digestion, or put feeble jokes in his mouth.
“I’m a bad boy,” he says, Nurse Boswell interpreted, “and I’m going to kick my little heels, I am, and splash the soapy water in their faces!”
When he broke down and wept from sheer despair of ever making them understand, they took him to the blinding glare of a sunny window and threw him about until he was obliged to feign indisposition in order to make them put him down. He came to me about it sometimes, and I said: “All right, just lie down quietly, and I will say you are resting if they come.”
Just as he was comfortably settled a cheerful voice and clapping of hands was heard at the door, and in came nurse.