After that she fell in with her nurse’s humour, and the two proceeded to “have a night of it.” Ziza said she’d be a real fairy and tell him what to do, and Willie said he’d be a gnome or a he-fairy and do it.
At the outset Willie discovered that he had forgotten coals, but this was rectified by another five minutes’ airing, and a rousing fire was quickly roaring in the chimney, while the kettle sang and spluttered on it like a sympathetic thing, as no doubt it was. Willie cleared the small table that stood at the invalid’s bed side, and arranged upon it the loaf, the tea-pot, two cracked tea-cups, the butter and sugar, and the wax-candle—which latter was stuck into a quart bottle in default of a better candle-stick.
“Now, ain’t that jolly?” said the nurse, sitting down and rubbing his hands.
“Very!” replied the patient, her eyes sparkling with delight.
“It’s so like a scene in a play,” continued Willie.
“Only much more real,” suggested the fairy.
“Now, then, Ziza, have a cup o’ tea, fresh from the market o’ Chiny, as your dad would say, if he was sellin’ it by auction. He’s a knowin’ codger your dad is, Ziza. There. I knowed I forgot somethin’ else—the cream!”
“I don’t mind it, indeed I don’t,” said Ziza earnestly.
Willie had started up to run out and rectify this omission, but on being assured that the fairy liked tea almost as well without as with cream, and that there was no cream to be got near at hand, he sat down again and continued to do the honours of the table. First he made the fairy sit up in bed, and commented sadly on her poor thin neck as she did it, observing that she was nothing better than a skeleton in a skin. Then he took off his own jacket and put it on her shoulders, tying the arms round her neck. Next he placed a piece of board in front of her, saying that it was a capital tray, and on this he arranged the viands neatly.
“Now, then, go at it, Ziza,” he said, when all was arranged.