Abruptly she stopped and stared up suspiciously into the White Linen Nurse’s eyes. “Ha!” she mocked, “you thought I was going to say, ‘If I should die before I wake,’ didn’t you? Well, I’m not.”
“It would have been more generous,” acknowledged the White Linen Nurse.
Very stiffly the Little Girl pursed her lips. “It’s plenty generous enough when it’s all done!” she said severely. “And I’ll thank you, Miss Malgregor, not to interrupt me again!” With excessive deliberateness she went back to the first line of her poem and began all over again:
“Now I sit me down to nap,
All curled up in a nursie’s lap.
If she should die before I wake,
Give her—give her ten cents, for anybody’s sake!”
“Why, that’s a—a cunning little prayer,” yawned the White Linen Nurse. Most certainly of course she would have smiled if the yawn hadn’t caught her first. But now in the middle of the yawn it was a great deal easier to repeat the “very cunning” than to force her lips into any new expression. “Very cunning, very cunning,” she kept crooning conscientiously.
Modestly, like some other successful authors, the Little Girl flapped her eyelids languidly open and shut for three or four times before she acknowledged the compliment. “Oh, cunning as any of ’em,” she admitted offhandishly. Only once again did she open either mouth or eyes, and this time it was merely one eye and half a mouth. “Do my fat iron braces hurt you?” she mumbled drowsily.
“Yes, a little,” conceded the White Linen Nurse.