'Please God we'll never need help of that kind, my girl,' said father. 'But it's best to be at work, I know, when one's had a trouble. The day'll maybe come, Martha, when you'll be glad to have saved a little more for a home of your own, after all. So I'd not be the one to stand in your way, a few months hence—nor mother neither—if a good place offers.'
'Thank you, father,' I said again; 'but the only home of my own I'll ever care for will be here—by mother and you.'
And so it proved.
I little thought how soon father's words about not standing in my way if a nice place offered would be put to the test.
I saw the children who were lodging at Mrs. Nutfold's several times in the course of the next week or two. They seemed to have a great fancy for the pine-woods, and from where they lived they could not, to get to them, but pass across the common within sight of our cottage. And once or twice I met them in the village street. Not all of them together—once it was only the two youngest with the nurse; they were waiting at the door of the post-office, which was also the grocer's and the baker's, while she was inside chattering and laughing a deal more than she'd any call to, it seemed to me. (I'm afraid I took a real right-down dislike to that nurse, which isn't a proper thing to do before one has any certain reason for it.) And dear little ladies they looked, though the elder one—that was the middle one of the three—had rather an anxious expression in her face, that struck me. The baby—she was nearly three, but I heard them call her baby—was a little fat bundle of smiles and dimples. I don't think even a cross nurse would have had power to trouble her much.
Another time it was the two elder girls and the lame boy I met. It was a windy day, and the eldest Missy's big flapping bonnet had blown back, so I had a good look at her. She was a beautiful child—blue eyes, very dark blue, or seeming so from the clear black eyebrows and thick long eyelashes, and dark almost black hair, with just a little wave in it; not so long or curling as her sister's, which was out-of-the-way beautiful hair, but seeming somehow just to suit her, as everything about her did. She came walking along with the proud springing step I had noticed that first day, and she was talking away to the others as if to cheer and encourage them, even though the boy was full three years older than she, and supposed to be taking charge of her and her sister, I fancy.
'Nonsense, Franz,' she was saying in her decided spoken way, 'nonsense. I won't have you and Lally treated like that. And I don't care—I mean I can't help if it does trouble mamma. Mammas must be troubled about their children sometimes; that's what being a mamma means.'
I managed to keep near them for a bit. I hope it was not a mean taking-advantage. I have often told them of it since—it was really that I did feel such an interest in the dear children, and my mind misgave me from the first about that nurse—it did so indeed.
'If only——' said the boy with a tiny sigh. But again came that clear-spoken little voice, 'Nonsense, Franz.'
I never did hear a child of her age speak so well as Miss Bess. It's pretty to hear broken talking in a child sometimes, lisping, and some of the funny turns they'll give their words; but it's even prettier to hear clear complete talk like hers in a young child.