“Poor little man! so he is.” She took him into her arms, and the impending yell collapsed as if by magic. “He shall share Harold’s supper, at any rate. Come in, nurse. What is your name? Kalliopé? Have you had charge of him long?”
“Since he was born, my lady,” lied Danaë with her usual hardihood, resisting the impulse to snatch her darling from the stranger’s arms, and following meekly up the steps. At the top stood an elderly English maid holding a child of about Janni’s age, and dark-haired like him, but more strongly built, and with his father’s deep blue eyes.
“Hasn’t he grown?” demanded the mother ecstatically, as Wylie took the child, with a kind word to the maid. “He gets more like you every day. You must see it.”
“Never was such a likeness, sir,” corroborated the nurse dutifully. “And so knowing, bless his little heart!”
“Here’s a companion for him. Let’s see what they think of one another,” said Wylie, waiving judiciously the question of likeness. “Put yours down here, Zoe. Nonsense! why shouldn’t they like it?”
His wife had demurred, and as it proved, with reason, for when the two children were set face to face upon the divan, their first acknowledgment of each other’s presence, after one horrified stare, was a simultaneous yell. Danaë flew to the rescue of her charge, and the English nurse of hers, and Wylie stood astonished, while his wife laughed.
“They will make friends over their bread and milk,” she said. “Come, Kalliopé.”
Mounting the steps to the roof of the original buildings, they reached the modern rooms, fitted up in English style, which formed the home of the Wylies. Danaë glanced round with something like awe at the appointments of the nursery. She had thought Janni’s nursery at the villa “European” in the extreme, but it had been nothing like this. Wylie brought in a second high chair from another room, and the two nurses were speedily engaged in feeding their respective charges with bread and milk. Very quickly Danaë observed, to her confusion, that Janni’s table manners were not producing a favourable impression. He grabbed at the spoon, filled his mouth too full, and choked, to the great scandal of his neighbour opposite, who commented on his behaviour obviously, though unintelligibly, in the nurse’s ear.
“There, there, Master Harold! he don’t know no better,” she said reprovingly, turning to the parents to add admiringly, “Did you ever see anybody so quick to notice things, ma’am?”