“What?” said Mary.
“There’s one thing I want, if you think you could choose it for me; it’s a pair of reins. I’ve got money to pay for them—plenty; so you can tell mamma if she’ll pay them in the shop, she can take the money out of my best purse that she keeps for me, when she comes home. They’ll cost about—” he stopped again, for he really did not know.
“Do you mean red braid ones, Leigh, like my old ones with the bells on?” asked Artie.
“No, of course not. I want regular good strong leather ones—proper ones, d’you hear, Mary?”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I’m listenin’.”
“Well, look here then; they must be of nice brown leather, and you must pull it well to be sure it’s strong. And they must have a kind of front-piece, stiff, you know, that they are fastened to, or perhaps they cross over it, I’m not sure. And they must be about as long as from me, where I’m sitting now, to where Artie is. And if you can’t get them nice in one shop, you must ask mamma to let you go to another, and you mustn’t be in a hurry to just take the first ones they show you. You must choose well, Mary, and—”
“Don’t take half an hour about it when half a minute would do,” said nurse, in rather an odd voice.
Leigh grew very red.
“Nurse,” he said, “reins are very pertickler things to get. Leather things have to be good, you know.”
“And so have silk things and cotton things and all the other things that ladies take so long to shop about,” said nurse. “But, I’m sure poor dear Miss Mary’s head will never hold all the explaining you’ve been giving her. If you take my advice, Master Leigh, you’ll run off to your mamma and tell her what you want and settle about the price and everything. She will be just finishing luncheon, I should think. It was to be early to-day.”