And in the playroom Nurse was talking sadly to Eliza as she darned the boys’ stockings. The piece of news she was giving Eliza was the very piece of news that Nipper had heard, and which had caused his tears.
“The master has given me notice,” she said, wiping her eyes. “He says it’s all my fault the way the boys behave, and it’s got so terrible he won’t stand it a moment longer. He’s given me notice, and he’s going to get a strict governess, who won’t stand any nonsense, and will get them into good discipline. From the day those twins were born I’ve looked after them—ten years, now. And Nipper’s just on eight—and I’ve got to leave them!” Poor old Nurse laid her head down on the basket of stockings and broke down. Since the boys’ parents had been drowned in a shipwreck the old woman had had them under her care, but they had repaid her with selfishness and disobedience.
The way the “young gentlemen up at the Hall” behaved was the talk of the village. They would steal fruit, not only from their grandfather’s glasshouses, but from the poor people’s little gardens. They would let out Farmer Johnson’s pigs, and chase them all over the village. There was nothing too bad for them to do.
“I pity the person as will have the looking after of them,” said Eliza. “I only hope the master will get someone really strict.”
CHAPTER II
A COUNCIL OF WAR
It was three weeks later that David called a Council of War in the garden. Nurse had departed with her boxes. Grandfather had engaged a “strict governess.”
The Council of War had met in the old pigsty, where all really secret Councils took place. This being a really important Council, the refreshments consisted of peaches and the best hothouse grapes—stolen, of course, from the hothouse, though the boys knew well enough the old gardener would get into trouble with his master, and as likely as not one of the under-gardeners would get the blame.
“And so the dragon is to arrive at six o’clock to-night,” said Bill. “Her name is Miss Prince.”
“Can’t you just see her?” said David, the imaginative one. “She will be very tall and bony, and about a hundred, with grey hair all screwed up in a little knob, and big round goggles, and teeth like an old horse, and a voice like—like—like——”
“Like the ugly sisters in the Cinderella pantomime,” said Nipper.