“My dear,” said I, “what is it?”
This sounds as if I have no dignity. I have, up to the moment that some one cries, and then I maintain that dignity loses its point. There is a perfectly well-bred dignity which has hurt more hearts than ever sympathy has bound up, but you do not learn that until you are seventy and then no one listens to what you have learned.
Little Nursemaid showed me one eye, blue as her gown.
“Nothink, ma’am,” she said shamelessly, and fell to sobbing anew.
“Nonsense,” said I gently, “you are not crying for nothing, are you?”
Think of the times that all the women in the world require to have that said to them.
Little Charge whimpered slightly as if to say that he could cry all day if he chose, and only be scolded for his pains. He was doubtless justly aggrieved at my sympathy for a performance borrowed from his own province. Little Nursemaid pushed the go-cart with her foot, such a trim little well-shod foot, without openwork stockings.
“Tell me about it,” I urged with even more persuasiveness. “Perhaps I could help you, you know.”
She shook her head. No; nobody could help her.
“Is it that some one is dead?” I asked.