A Flat Iron for a Farthing | Page 7

only too glad to reply;
"but it's the drawing-room and not the nursery as does it. Miss Burton
is always a begging for him to be allowed to stay up at nights and to
lunch in the dining-room, and to come down of a morning, and to have
a half-holiday in an afternoon; and, saving your better knowledge, sir,
it's a bad thing to break into the regular ways of children. It ain't for
their happiness, nor for any one else's."
"You are perfectly right, perfectly right," said my father, "and it shall
not occur again. Ah! my poor boy," he added in an irrepressible
outburst, "you suffer for lack of a mother's care. I do what I can, but a
man cannot supply a woman's place to a child."
Mrs. Bundle's feelings at this soliloquy may be imagined. "You might
have knocked me down with a feather, sir," she assured the butler
(unlikely as it seemed!) in describing the scene afterwards. She found
strength, however, to reply to my father's remark.
"Indeed, sir, a mother's place never can be filled to a child by no one
whatever. Least of all such a mother as he had in your dear lady. But
he's a boy, sir, and not a girl, and in all reason a father is what he'll
chiefly look to in a year or two. And for the meanwhile, sir, I ask you,
could Master Reginald look better or behave better than he did afore
the company come? It's only natural as smart ladies who knows nothing
whatever of children, and how they should be brought up, and what's
for their good, should think it a kindness to spoil them. Any one may
see the lady has no notion of children, and would be the ruin of Master
Reginald if she had much to do with him; but when the company's gone,
sir, and he's left quiet with his papa, you'll find him as good as any
young gentleman needs to be, if you'll excuse my freedom in speaking,
sir."

Whatever my father thought of Mrs. Bundle's freedom of speech, he
only said,
"Master Reginald will be quite under your orders for the future, Nurse,"
and so dismissed her.
And Mrs. Bundle having "said her say," withdrew to say it over again
in confidence to the housekeeper.
As for me, if my vanity was stronger than my good taste for a while,
the quickness of childish instinct soon convinced me that Miss Burton
had no real affection for me. Then I was puzzled by her spasmodic
attentions when my father was in the room, and her rough repulses
when I "bothered" her at less appropriate moments. I got tired of her,
too, of the sound of her voice, of her black hair and unchanging red
cheeks. And from the day that I caught her beating Rubens for lying on
the edge of her dress, I lived in terror of her. Those rolling black eyes
had not a pleasant look when the lady was out of temper. And was she
really to be the new mistress of the house? To take the place of my fair,
gentle, beautiful mother? That wave of household gossip which for ever
surges behind the master's back was always breaking over me now, in
expressions of pity for the motherless child of "the dear lady dead and
gone."
"I don't like black hair," I announced one day at luncheon; "I like
beautiful, shining, golden hair, like poor mamma's."
"Don't talk nonsense, Reginald," said my father, angrily, and shortly
afterwards I was dismissed to the nursery.
If I had only had my childish memory to trust to, I do not think that I
could have kept so clear a remembrance of my mother as I had. But in
my father's dressing-room there hung a water-colour sketch of his
young wife, with me--her first baby--on her lap. It was a very happy
portrait. The little one was nestled in her arms, and she herself was just
looking up with a bright smile of happiness and pride. That look came
full at the spectator, and perhaps it was because it was so very lifelike
that I had (ever since I could remember) indulged a curious freak of

childish sentiment by nodding to the picture and saying,
"Good-morning, mamma," whenever I came into the room. Such little
superstitions become part of one's life, and I freely confess that I salute
that portrait still! I remember, too, that as time went on I lost sight of
the fact that it was I who lay on my mother's lap, and always regarded
the two as Mamma and Sister Alice--that ever-baby sister whom I had
once kissed, and no more. I generally saw them at least once a day, for
it was my