A Flat Iron for a Farthing | Page 5

But her most masterly stroke was a certain conversation with Mrs.
Cadman carried on in my hearing.
"Have you ever notice, Mrs. Cadman," inquired my bony nurse of her
not less bony visitor--"Have you ever notice how them stout people as
looks so good-natured as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths is that
wicked and cruel underneath?" And then followed a series of nurse's
most ghastly anecdotes, relative to fat mothers who had ill-treated their
children, fat nurses who had nearly been the death of their unfortunate
charges, fat female murderers, and a fat acquaintance of her own, who

was "taken" in apoplexy after a fit of rage with her husband.
"What a warning! what a moral!" said Mrs. Cadman. She meant it for a
pious observation, but I felt that the warning and the moral were for me.
And not even the presence of Rubens could dispel the darkness of my
dreams that night.
Alternately goaded and caressed by my nurse, who now laid aside a
habit she had of beating a tattoo with her knuckles on my head when I
was naughty, to the intense confusion and irritation of my brain, I at
last resolved to beg my father to let her remain with us. I felt that it
was--as she had pointed out--intense ingratitude on my part to wish to
part with her, and I said as much when I went down to dessert that
evening. Morever, I now lived in vague fear of those terrible qualities
which lay hidden beneath Mrs. Bundle's benevolent exterior.
"If nurse has been teasing you about the matter," said my father, with a
frown, "that would decide me to get rid of her, if I had not so decided
before. As to your not liking Mrs. Bundle now--My dear little son, you
must learn to know your own mind. You told me you wanted Mrs.
Bundle--by very good luck I have been able to get hold of her, and
when she comes you must make the best of her."
She came the next day, and my bony nurse departed. She wept
indignantly, I wept remorsefully, and then waited in terror for the
manifestation of Mrs. Bundle's cruel propensities.
I waited in vain. The reign of Mrs. Bundle was a reign of peace and
plenty, of loving-kindness and all good things. Moreover it was a reign
of wholesomeness, both for body and mind. She did not give me cheese
and beer from her own supper when she was in a good temper, nor
pound my unfortunate head with her knuckles if I displeased her. She
was strict in the maintenance of a certain old-fashioned nursery
etiquette, which obliged me to put away my chair after meals, fold my
clothes at bedtime, put away my toys when I had done with them, say
"please," "thank you," grace before and after meals, prayers night and
morning, a hymn in bed, and the Church Catechism on Sunday. She
snubbed the maids who alluded in my presence to things I could not or

should not understand, and she directed her own conversation to me, on
matters suitable to my age, instead of talking over my childish head to
her gossips. The stories of horror and crime, the fore-doomed babies,
the murders, the mysterious whispered communications faded from my
untroubled brain. Nurse Bundle's tales were of the young masters and
misses she had known. Her worst domestic tragedy was about the boy
who broke his leg over the chair he had failed to put away after
breakfast. Her romances were the good old Nursery Legends of Dick
Whittington, the Babes in the Wood, and so forth. My dreams became
less like the columns of a provincial newspaper. I imagined myself
another Marquis of Carabas, with Rubens in boots. I made a desert
island in the garden, which only lacked the geography-book peculiarity
of "water all round" it. I planted beans in the fond hope that they would
tower to the skies and take me with them. I became--in fancy--Lord
Mayor of London, and Mrs. Bundle shared my civic throne and
dignities, and we gave Rubens six beefeaters and a barge to wait upon
his pleasure.
Life, in short, was utterly changed for me. I grew strong, and stout, and
well, and happy. And I loved Nurse Bundle.
CHAPTER III
THE DARK LADY--TROUBLE IMPENDING--BEAUTIFUL,
GOLDEN MAMMA
So two years passed away. Nurse Bundle was still with me. With her I
"did lessons" after a fashion. I learned to read, I had many of the
Psalms and a good deal of poetry--sacred and secular--by heart. In an
old-fashioned, but slow and thorough manner, I acquired the first
outlines of geography, arithmetic, etc., and what Mrs. Bundle taught
me I repeated to Rubens. But I don't think he ever learned the