“You will have to use this room a good deal,” said Mrs Fortescue, “but in warmer weather, when you don’t need fires, you can prepare your lessons in your own room upstairs, as you will see. Now, if we’ve all finished, I am anxious to take you over the house, Roley has seen it all,” with a glance at him.
“Yes,” Roland answered, “and I think it’s quite wonderful what you’ve made of it, Mums, really wonderful. The rooms couldn’t be nicer.”
And as the little girls followed their mother upstairs, in their heart they could not but agree with him. A nice airy room, not large of course, but as large as any in the house, had been furnished for them, with their own little beds and toilet-table, and as many of their favourite belongings as it was possible to find room for, including two bookcases with glass doors, on the wall, and a small writing-table in front of the fireplace.
“It’s really very nice, Mumsey dear,” said Leila, delighted at the sight of her low straw chair in one corner; “I don’t believe I’d ever be too cold up here—not with a shawl on. It seems so nice and peaceful, if only—” she stopped and hesitated and glanced at her sister.
“You’d better finish,” said Chrissie sharply. “I know it’s something horrid about me.”
“No, it isn’t horrid,” Leila replied. “It’s only if you could be tidy.”
”‘Tidy,’ indeed,” repeated Chrissie scornfully.
“I’m quite as tidy as you, and tidier. Am I not, Nurse?” she went on, turning to her.
Nurse, in spite of her extreme anxiety to make the best of things and to keep all smooth, could scarcely help smiling.
“I’m afraid, my dear, that there isn’t much to be said as to tidiness,” she replied. “Perhaps it’s been partly my fault, ma’am,” she went on to Mrs Fortescue, “I’ve not left off feeling as if the young ladies were still the tiny little fairies I remember them when I first came. But now they’re so much bigger, and with things being so different, I’m sure Miss Leila and Miss Chrissie will do their very best to help in every way.”