The boy picked her up in his arms, and I saw the fair shaggy head and fat dimpled cheeks clasped close and near to his thin white face, and if there were tears in Master Francis's eyes I am sure it wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Never was a braver spirit, and no one that knows him now could think him less a hero could they look back over the whole of his life.
I found Miss Bess sitting quietly with the pincushion on her lap, by the window, making patterns with the pins, apparently quite content. She had not been crying, indeed it took a great deal to get a tear from that child, she had such a spirit of her own. Still she was sorry for what she had done, and she bore no malice, that I could see by the clear look in her pretty eyes as she glanced up at me.
'Nurse,' she said, though more with the air of a little queen granting a favour than a tiresome child asking to be forgiven, 'I'm not going to tease any more. It's gone now, and I'm going to be good. I'm very sorry for making Lally cry, though she is a little silly—of course I wouldn't care to do it if she wasn't,—and I'm dreadfully sorry for poor old Franz's exercise. Look what I have been doing to make me remember,' and I saw that she had marked the words 'Bess sorry' with the pins. 'If you leave it there for a few days, and just say "pincushion" if you see me beginning again, it'll remind me.'
It wasn't very easy for me to keep as grave as I wished, but I answered quietly—
'Very well, Miss Bess, I hope you'll keep to what you say,' and we went back, quite friendly again, to the other room.
Master Francis and she began settling what games they would play, and I took the opportunity of slipping upstairs to the attic to call Miss Lally down. She came running out, as bright as could be, and gave me her knitting to hide away for her.
'Nursie,' she said, 'I really think there's good fairies in the attic. I've got on so well. Four whole rows all round and none stitches dropped.'
So that rainy day ended more cheerfully than it had begun.
Unluckily, however, the worst of the mischief caused by Miss Bess's heedlessness didn't show for some little time to come. The next Latin lesson passed off by all accounts very well, especially for Miss Bess. For, thanks to her new resolutions, she was in a most biddable mood, and quite ready to take her cousin's advice as to learning her list of words again, giving up half an hour of her playtime on purpose.