"Nor I wasn't neither," said Duke, taking courage by her example.
"That's all right, then," said Grandmamma cheerfully, not having noticed anything unusual in their tone. "Poor Nurse, we are sorry for her to be ill, but I don't think it will be anything very bad. And I am sure you will try to be very good."
"Yes, Grandmamma," said the two voices together, but less confidently and more timidly than usual. This time their tone caught the old lady's attention.
"There's something on their minds," she said to herself. But she was a wise old lady, and thought it better to wait a while before trying to find out what it was.
"When I was a little girl," she began—and the children pricked up their ears—"when I was a little girl I remember once that our nurse was ill, or she had to go away to see some friend who was ill, and, as I was the eldest of several little brothers and sisters, I had to help to take care of them. I had always thought it would be very pleasant to be without a nurse, though we liked ours very well, and to be able to do just as we wished. But I shall never forget how pleased I was to see her come back again," and Grandmamma laughed a little at the recollection.
"Why were you so pleased, Grandmamma?" asked Pamela. "Had you done anyfing naughty?"
"That wouldn't have made Grandmamma pleased for her nurse to come back," said Duke; and a sudden thought of how "us" would have felt had Nurse come into the room just as Toby was licking up the last of the bread and milk made his face grow rosy.
"We had not meant to be naughty," said Grandmamma, "but we were not fit to manage for ourselves. Each of us wanted to do a different way, and we were like a flock of poor little sheep without a shepherd. You do not know, children, what a comfort it is to have rules one must obey."
"But big people don't have to obey," said Duke.
"Ah yes, they have; and when they try to think they have not, then it is that everything goes wrong with them;" and seeing by the look in the two little faces that they were still puzzled—"People have to obey all their lives if they want to be happy," she went on. "Long after they have no more nurses or fathers and mothers—or grandpapas and grandmammas," with a little smile, which somehow made the corners of Duke's and Pamela's mouths go down. "The use of all those when we are young is only to teach us what obeying means—to teach us to listen to the voice we should always obey——" and Grandmamma stopped a minute and looked at "us."