She was good now, you see, because the pink medicine was beginning to work. And this is the way that good children talk. But the nurse couldn’t make it out.
“Well,” she said, with a laugh, “I’m sure it’s strange to hear you say that, Miss Freda.”
“I fear,” said Freda, “that I have often been extremely thoughtless in the past, and that I have often allowed my temper to get the better of me, with the result that I have lain down on the floor and bellowed at the top of my voice. I can only express my regret that this should have been so, and my hope that you will overlook the trouble which I must have given you.”
The nurse opened her mouth very wide and stared.
“Good gracious, Miss Freda!” she said. “What has come over you?”
“Nothing, that I am aware of,” said Freda. “And now, if you will be good enough to dress me, I think it is time for us to go up to the Park.”
The nurse was more puzzled than ever, for Freda used almost always to make a fuss about going out. But she was still more puzzled by the time they came in again. For Freda hadn’t walked in a single puddle, she had insisted on keeping her gloves on, she hadn’t run, she hadn’t shouted, and she had refused to play with her usual friends because she said their games were so noisy and rough.
At lunch time she asked for a second helping of plain rice-pudding, and ate every scrap of it.
“This can’t last,” said the nurse to herself. But it did. And after tea, when Freda went down to the drawing-room, she quite terrified her mother by asking to be taught a hymn—although her father had just offered to play at tigers with her.
At half-past six she kissed her father and mother and went up to bed without being fetched. While she was having her bath, instead of splashing—and screaming when it was time to come out—she told her nurse how she had decided to give all her toys to the poor children who hadn’t got any. As soon as she was put to bed, she lay quietly down and went fast to sleep.