Joyce listened with a perplexed expression on her face.
“Have you ever seed an angel, Aunt Adda?” this being her childish abbreviation of Adelaide.
“Dear me, nurse! how badly the child speaks. She is more than six years old, you say. Why my Rolf is only seven, and speaks beautifully! What did you say, Joyce?”—very sharply—“seen an angel? What unhealthy nonsense to put into a child’s head! This comes of new-fangled ideas on your mother’s part”—with a glance in my direction. “No, child! of course not. No one has seen an angel.”
Joyce looked so shocked at this that I hastened to interpret Mrs. Markham’s speech.
“No one sees angels now, Joyce; not as the good people in the Bible used to see them; perhaps we are not good enough. But what put angels into your head, my dear?”
“Only Aunt Adda said Reggie was like an angel, and I thought she had seed one. What is a cherub, nurse, dear? Something good to eat?”
I saw a smile hovering on Mrs. Markham’s thin lips. Evidently she found Joyce amusing, but just then a loud peevish voice was distinctly audible in the passage.
“Mother, mother, I say! Go away, Juddy, I tell you. You are a nasty disagreeable old cat—and I will go to mother”—this accompanied by ominous kicks.
I signed to Hannah to take the children into the adjoining room. It was Reggie’s bedtime, and Joyce was tired with her journey. The door was scarcely closed upon them before the same violent kicking was heard against the nursery door.
“It is only Rolf. I am afraid he is very cross,” observed Mrs. Markham, placidly, shivering a little after the fashion of people who have lived in India, as she moved away from the open window, and drew a lace scarf round her. “Judson is such a bad manager. She never does contrive to amuse him, or keep him quiet.”