A Flat Iron for a Farthing | Page 3

which once caused me to ask my nurse if she ever took

them out.
"On Sundays she do," said Nurse.
"She's very religious then, I suppose," said I; and I did really think it a
great compliment that she paid to the first day of the week.
I was only just four years old at this time--an age when one is apt to ask
inconvenient questions and to make strange observations--when one is
struggling to understand life through the mist of novelties about one,
and the additional confusion of falsehood which it is so common to
speak or to insinuate without scruple to very young children.
The housekeeper and Mrs. Cadman had conversed for some time after
tea without diverting my attention from the new box of bricks which
Mrs. Bundle (commissioned by my father) had brought from the town
for me; but when I had put all the round arches on the pairs of pillars,
and had made a very successful "Tower of Babel" with cross layers of
the bricks tapering towards the top, I had leisure to look round and
listen.
"I never know'd one with that look as lived," Mrs. Cadman was saying,
in her hollow tone. "It took notice from the first. Mark my words,
ma'am, a sweeter child I never saw, but it's too good and too pretty to
be long for this world."
It is difficult to say exactly how much one understands at four years old,
or rather how far one quite comprehends the things one perceives in
part. I understood, or felt, enough of what I heard, and of the
sympathetic sighs that followed Mrs. Cadman's speech, to make me
stumble over the Tower of Babel, and present myself at Mrs. Cadman's
knee with the question--
"Is mamma too pretty and good for this world, Mrs. Cadman?"
I caught her elderly wink as quickly as the housekeeper, to whom it
was directed. I was not completely deceived by her answer.

"Why, bless his dear heart, Master Reginald. Who did he think I was
talking about, love?"
"My new baby sister," said I, without hesitation.
"No such thing, lovey," said the audacious Mrs. Cadman; "housekeeper
and me was talking about Mrs. Jones's little boy."
"Where does Mrs. Jones live?" I asked.
"In London town, my dear."
I sighed. I knew nothing of London town, and could not prove that Mrs.
Jones had no existence. But I felt dimly dissatisfied, in spite of a slice
of sponge-cake, and being put to bed (for a treat) in papa's
dressing-room. My sleep was broken by uneasy dreams, in which Mrs.
Jones figured with the face of Mrs. Cadman and her hollow voice. I had
a sensation that that night the house never went to rest. People came in
and out with a pretentious purpose of not awaking me. My father never
came to bed. I felt convinced that I heard the doctor's voice in the
passage. At last, while it was yet dark, and when I seemed to have been
sleeping and waking, waking and falling asleep again in my crib for
weeks, my father came in with a strange look upon his face, and took
me up in his arms, and wrapped a blanket round me, saying mamma
wanted to kiss me, but I must be very good and make no noise. There
was little fear of that! I gazed in utter silence at the sweet face that was
whiter than the sheet below it, the hair that shone brighter than ever in
the candlelight. Only when I kissed her, and she had laid her wan hand
on my head, I whispered to my father, "Why is mamma so cold?"
With a smothered groan he carried me back to bed, and I cried myself
to sleep. It was too true, then. She was too good and too pretty for this
world, and before sunrise she was gone.
Before the day was ended Sister Alice left us also. She never knew a
harder resting-place than our mother's arms.
CHAPTER II

"THE LOOK"--RUBENS--MRS. BUNDLE AGAIN
My widowed father and I were both terribly lonely. The depths of his
loss in the lovely and lovable wife who had been his constant
companion for nearly six years I could not fathom at the time. For my
own part, I was quite as miserable as I have ever been since, and I
doubt if I shall ever feel such overwhelming desolation again, unless
the same sorrow befalls me as then befell him.
I "fretted"--as the servants expressed it--to such an extent as to affect
my health; and I fancy it was because my father's attention was called
to the fact that I was fast fading after the mother and sister whose death
(and my own loneliness) I bewailed, that he roused himself from