"Well, dear?" she said.
"I do so want to know what suits the boys would travel in," I said. "I have my big, long coat, but they haven't got such big ones. Mother, don't you think they should have new ulsters?"
Mother gave a little laugh that was half a sigh.
"Audrey," she said, "what a queer child you are!— But perhaps," she added to herself in a low voice, "perhaps it is as well."
I heard the words, and though I could not quite see that there was anything queer in my thinking about new ulsters for the boys, I did not tease mother any more about them just then. She kissed me again quite kindly, and then carried Racey away. He just woke up a very little as she lifted him, and gave a sort of cross wriggle—poor little boy, he had been so comfortably asleep. But when he saw that it was mother who was lifting him, he left off being cross in one moment.
"Dear little muzzie," he said, and though he was too sleepy to open his eyes again, he puckered up his little red lips for a kiss. "Muzzie," was what the boys called mother sometimes for a pet name. It wasn't very pretty, but she didn't mind.
"My darling little Racey," she said, as she kissed him; and somehow the way she said "darling" made me wish just a little that I was Racey instead of myself. Yet I didn't think about it much. My fancy would go running on about going to uncle Geoff's, and the journey, and how I would take care of the boys and all that; and when I went to sleep I had such queer dreams. I thought uncle Geoff had a face like Pierson when she was cross, and that he wore a great big ulster buttoned all down the back instead of the front, because, he said, that was the fashion in China.
