“All the same, Michael, I know it’s going to be awfully dull till you come back again. They say it’s so gloomy and dark in the winter sometimes; not like the country. I shall always like the country best, Mike.”
“So should I,” said her cousin, “that’s to say if it was a choice between it and a town, though I like the sea best of all, of course. But don’t get melancholy again, Moll. Something may turn up to help you through the gloomy months.”
“I shall miss you so,” said Mary, “and there’s something else I shall miss too.”
She was thinking of the Cooies, and she was glad to feel that once Michael had seen them and knew about them, she would be able to tell him of their going away, and that they only came back out of affection for her now and then.
More than this she felt she must not tell him, as it was a sort of secret between her and them. There are fairy secrets sometimes which it would be almost impossible to tell to anybody.
The rest of that evening and the next morning passed very cheerfully, even though Michael’s time was to be so short at home. Nurse proved quite as kind and interested about the Christmas presents as Mary had expected. Indeed there was nothing she would not have been interested about if it concerned her eldest nursling, as big Michael was, and she was really fond of Mary too, and pleased to see her happy, though she had only had the care of her for a much shorter time than the others.
The two set off for their shopping quite early. They knew pretty exactly what they wanted to buy; which is always a great help when you go on such an expedition; for after a good deal of thought, nurse had decided that a new thimble was what “auntie” would like best. It was to be a really pretty one of a new pattern, and nurse was able to direct them to a jeweller’s shop where she had seen some beauties in the window, and it was to have his mother’s initials engraved on it, Michael said, and to be in a pretty case, lined with velvet. This important piece of business was quickly completed, as they found the jeweller’s without difficulty. Twitter’s present took rather longer; it was to be a set of toy tea-things, and as Michael liked china ones with tiny roses on, and Mary preferred some with forget-me-nots, they felt rather at a loss, till luckily the shopwoman, who was very good-natured, found a third pattern, of rosebuds and forget-me-nots together, which was a charming way out of the puzzle.
Then Michael proposed that they should go to a confectioner’s not far from their own Square, to get a little luncheon. They kept capital buns there, he said, and after eating two of them, and having a glass of delicious milk, Mary quite agreed with him, and they were sitting at the little round marble-topped table very happily, when she happened to glance at a clock hanging up on the wall, and started to see that it was already a quarter to twelve o’clock.
“Oh Mike,” she exclaimed, “we must hurry. It is nearly twelve.”
Michael glanced at his watch.