“Perhaps I am silly,” answered Mary, half mischievously. “You know, nurse, you are always calling me full of fancies.”
“They’s very nice fancies,” said Twitter, “Maly tells we lubly faily stolies, dudn’t her, Flitz?”
Fritz’s mouth was full, and the nursery rules for good behaviour at meals were strict, so he only nodded.
“Fairy tales are all very well in their proper place,” said nurse.
“What is their proper place?” asked Mary, and I am afraid she spoke rather pertly.
“Pretty picture-books and such like,” nurse replied, for she was very matter-of-fact. “Just like nursery rhymes and songs—‘Little Boy Blue’ and ‘Bo-peep,’ and all the rest of them. But it would be very silly for young ladies and gentlemen to go on with babyish things like that, when they can read quite well and learn beautiful verses like ‘Old Father William,’ and ‘The Battle of —’ no, I don’t rightly remember the name, but it’s a fine piece of poetry if ever there was one, and I recollect my brother Tom saying it at a prize-giving at our school at home, and the squire’s lady had her handkerchief at her eyes, and the squire himself shook him by the hand, and Tom and me was that proud.”
This was interesting, and Mary could not resist asking a number of questions about Tom, as to how old he had been then, and how old he was now, to which nurse was only too pleased to reply, adding that he was now a schoolmaster himself, with little Toms of his own, whom she went to see when she had her holiday once a year.
So the conversation turned into pleasant directions, and nothing more was said about Mary’s fancifulness.
When she woke the next morning Mary’s first glance, as usual, was towards the window. She never had the blinds drawn down at night, for she loved the morning light, and it did not wake her: she slept too soundly for that. And as there were, as I have told you, gardens—large gardens—at the back of the house, where her room was, there was no one to overlook her window.
Ah—it was a dull morning—a dull, grey, early autumn morning, and “I hope it’s not going to rain,” thought Mary. “I’m so afraid the Cooies wouldn’t come if it did, though perhaps they’re not afraid of getting wet.”