'I didn't forget about them,' he answered, 'but we didn't promise them, and I thought it would be better to ask her first. She might like chocolates best, you know.'
'All right,' I said, and I thought perhaps it was better to ask her first. You see, if she didn't want her nurse to know about our coming to see her it would have been tiresome, as, of course, Margaret could not have told a story.
There she was, peeping out of the downstairs window already when we got there. And when she saw us she came farther out, a little bit on to the balcony. It was a sunny day for winter, and besides, she had a red shawl on, so she could not very well have caught cold. It was a very pretty shawl, with goldy marks or patterns on it. It was like one grandmamma had been sent a present of from India, and afterwards Margaret told me hers had come from India too. And it suited her, somehow, even though she was only a thin, pale little girl.
She smiled when she saw us, though she did not speak till we were near enough to hear what she said without her calling out. And when we stopped in front of her house, she said—
'I think you might come inside the garden. We could talk better.'
So we did, first glancing up at the next-door balcony, to see if the parrot was there.
Yes, he was, but not as far out as usual, and there was a cloth, or something, half-down round his cage, to keep him warmer, I suppose.
He was quite silent, but Margaret nodded her head up towards him.
'He told me you were coming,' she cried, 'though it wasn't in a very polite way. He croaked out—"Naughty boys! naughty boys!"'
We all three laughed a little.