“I don’t care, papa. We must go to see the boy—the poor, poor boy, in spite of dirt and smells. And then, you know—let me up on your knee and I’ll tell you all about it. There! Well, then, you know, I’d tidy the room up, and even wash it a little. Oh, you can’t think how nicely I washed up my doll’s room—her corner, you know,—that day when I spilt all her soup in trying to feed her, and then, while trying to wipe it up, I accidentally burst her, and all her inside came out—the sawdust, I mean. It was the worst mess I ever made, but I cleaned it up as well as Jessie herself could have done—so nurse said.”
“But the messes down in Whitechapel are much worse than you have described, dear,” expostulated the parent, who felt that his powers of resistance were going.
“So much the better, papa,” replied Di, kissing her sire’s lethargic visage. “I should like so much to try if I could clean up something worse than my doll’s room. And you’ve promised, you know.”
“No—only said ‘perhaps,’” returned Sir Richard quickly.
“Well, that’s the same thing; and now that it’s all nicely settled, I’ll go and see nurse. Good-bye, papa.”
“Good-bye, dear,” returned the knight, resigning himself to his fate and the newspaper.