"Dear Ted," she said; "you are a good, kind, little boy. But don't make yourself unhappy about Cissy. She is too little to cry for your going away, though she will laugh to see you come back."
Ted's face cleared, but suddenly a rosy colour spread over it.
"Muzzer," he said, in a low voice, tugging gently at her dress to make her stoop down, "muzzer, I sink I were going to cry not all for poor baby being sorry, but part 'cos I did so want to go."
Mother understood his simple confession.
"Yes, dear," she said, "I daresay you did, and it is right of you to tell me. My good little Ted," she could not resist adding again, and again little Ted's face grew red, but this time with pleasure at mother's praise.
Baby bore the announcement, which he considered it his duty to make to her with great formality, very philosophically. Less philosophically did she take nurse's wheeling her away from under her beloved tree with its fluttering branches, towards the house, where nurse had to go to prepare Ted for his expedition. In fact, I am sorry to say that so little did the young lady realise what was expected of her, that she burst into a loud roar, which was quite too much for Ted's feelings.
"Dear baby, sweet baby," he cried, "thoo mustn't be tooked away from thoo's tree. I'll ask muzzer to deck me, nurse," he went on eagerly, for his mother had returned to the house, "or I can nearly kite well deck myself. I'll call thoo if I can't find my things. I'll run and ask muzzer," and off he went, so eager to give no trouble, so ready and helpful that nurse thought it best to let him have his way, and to devote her attention to the discomposed Miss Baby.
Ted did not find his mother quite so quickly as he expected, though he peeped into the drawing-room and called her by name as he passed her own room upstairs, on his way to the nursery. The fact was that mother was in the kitchen consulting with cook as to the groceries required to be ordered, and it never came into Ted's head to look for her there at this time of day. So he went straight on to the nursery, and managing with a good deal of tugging and pulling and coaxing to open his drawer in the chest, he got out his best little coat and hat and prepared to don them. But first he looked at his hands, which were none the whiter for their recent ravages among the daisies.
"Zem's very dirty," he said to himself; "zem must be washed."
There was water in the jug, but Ted's ambition was aroused, and great things were to be expected of a little boy who was big enough to "deck himself," as he would have described the process.