'Baby thinks that's enough, when she's been ter-a-velling,' explained Miss Lally.
Then I set to work to unpack, and it was quite surprising how handy the two elder girls—and not they only, but Master Francis too—were in helping me, and explaining where their things were kept and all the nursery ways. Then I had to be shown Miss Bess's room, and nearly offended her little ladyship by saying I hadn't time just then to settle about the new covers. For I was determined to give some attention to Master Francis also.
His room was very plain, not to say bare; not that I hold with pampering boys, but he being delicate, it did seem to me he might have had a couch or easy-chair to rest his poor leg. He was very eager to make the best of things, telling me I had no idea what a beautiful view there was from his windows, of which there were three.
'I love the tower,' he said. 'I wouldn't change my room here for any other in the house.'
And I must say I thought it was very nice of him to put things in that way, considering too the sharp tone in which I had heard his aunt speak to him that very evening.
When I woke the next morning I found that Mrs. Brent's words had come true, for the sun was pouring in at the window, and when I drew up the blind and looked out I would scarce have known the place to be the same. The outlook was bare, to be sure, compared with the well-wooded country about my home; but the grounds just around the house were carefully kept, though in a plain way, no bedding-out plants or rare foreign shrubs, such as I had been used to see at Mr. Wyngate's country place. But all about Treluan there was the charm which no money will buy—the charm of age, very difficult to put into words, though I felt it strongly.
A little voice just then came across the room.
'Nurse, dear.' It was Miss Lalage. 'It's a very fine day, isn't it? I have been watching the sun getting up ever so long. When I first wokened, it was nearly quite dark.'
I looked at the child. She was sitting up in her cot; her face looked tired, and her large gray eyes had dark lines beneath them, as if she had not slept well. Miss Baby was still slumbering away in happy content—she was a child to sleep, to be sure! A round of the clock was nothing for her.
'My dear Miss Lally,' I said, 'you have never been awake since dawn, surely. Is your head aching, or is something the matter?'