CHAPTER V.
A NEW TROUBLE.
"Ah! folks spoil their children now;
When I was a young woman 'twas not so."
That first day passed—but drearily enough. Pierson was really very kind—kinder than we had ever known her. Not that she had ever been unkind; only grumbly—but never unkind so that the boys and I could be afraid of her, and when mother was with us, mother who was always cheerful, it didn't matter much if Pierson did grumble.
But to-day she was kinder than ever before, almost as if she had known by magic what was going to happen; and through her kindness there was a sort of sadness which made me like her all the better. I knew she kept thinking about poor mother—about its being her last day in England—in the same country as her poor little boys and girl, and so did I. All the day it was never out of my head for one inch of a minute, though I didn't say so, not to make the boys think of it like that. For in their funny way they seemed already to fancy papa and mother quite away, almost as if they were in China, and I didn't want to unsettle that feeling, as it would only have made it worse for them again.
Pierson unpacked our toys, and after all, Tom did cheer up a little when he saw his soldiers and his fort, which had been best toys at home, but which mamma told Pierson were to be every-day ones in London, both to please Tom and because there had been such a great throwing away of old ones, not worth packing, that really we should have had none to play with if our best ones had been kept for best. Mother had had such a good thought about our toys—almost as soon as it was really fixed about papa and her going away, she had begun packing up the good ones, so that when we got them out in London they seemed quite new, for it was nearly two months since we had had them, and it was quite a pleasure to see them again, though a little sadness too. Every one that came out of the box, there was something to say about it.
"My best paint-box that mother gave me last Christmas," Tom would say, or "My dear little pony horse with the little riding man, that Muzzie made a jacket for," Racey cried out. While as for me, every doll that appeared—dolls of course were my principal toys, and I had quite a lot of them—reminded me of some kind thought that perhaps I had not noticed enough at the time. Racey was perfectly silly about his horses—he loved them so that he almost provoked Tom and me—and we looked at each other as much as to say, "He doesn't understand." He really was, I suppose, too little to keep the thought of our trouble long in his mind, even though he had cried so dreadfully the day before, and I think the sight of his forgetting, as it were, made me all the sadder.
But when the toys were all arranged in their places, and the long day was over at last, even Racey grew dull, and unlike himself. It had been a very long day—we had not been out of our own rooms at all, except just for those few minutes in the morning, to see Uncle Geoff. He ran up to see us again in the evening—about four o'clock, our tea-time, that is to say—and said he was sorry the weather was so bad, he hoped it would be better to-morrow, but even as he was speaking to us the man-servant came up to say he was wanted again, and he had to run off. And I'm sure all the afternoon the bell had never left off ringing, and there were lots and lots of carriages came to the door, with ladies and gentlemen and even children, to see him. If we could have watched the people getting out and in of the carriages it would have been fun, but from the day nursery window we couldn't see them well, for standing up on the window-sill was too high, and standing on a chair was too low. It wasn't till some time after that, that we found out we could see them beautifully from the bedroom window, by putting a buffet in an old rocking-chair that always stood there. And by four o'clock it was quite dark!