"Don't mind the babies at present," said Verena. "Don't snatch them up and kiss them, Briar. Patty, keep your hands off. Nurse, we have come."
She lifted her very much wrinkled old face and looked out of deep-set, black eyes full at the young girl.
"How are we to bear it? Shall we fall on our knees and get round you in a little circle? We must talk to you. You must advise us."
"Eh, dears!" said nurse. "I am nearly past that sort of thing. I'm not as young as I wor, and master and me we're both getting old. It doesn't seem to me to matter much now whether a body's pretty or not, or whether you dress beautiful, or whether a thing is made to look pretty or otherwise. We're all food for worms, dears, all of us, and where's the use of fashing?"
"How horrid of you, nurse!" said Verena. "We have got beautiful bodies, and our souls ought to be more beautiful still. What about the resurrection of the body, you dreadful old nurse?"
"Oh, never mind me, dears; it was only a sort of dream I were dreaming of the funeral of your poor dear mother, who died when this dear lamb was born."
Here nurse patted the fat arm of the youngest hope of the house of Dale, little Marjorie, who looked round at her with rosy face and big blue eyes. Marjorie was between three and four years old, and was a very beautiful little child. Verena, unable to restrain herself any longer, bent down and encircled Marjorie with her strong young arms and clasped her in an ecstatic embrace.
"There, now," she said; "I am better. I forbid all the rest of you girls to touch Marjorie. Penelope, I'll kiss you later."
Penelope was seven years old--a dark child with a round face--not a pretty child, but one full of wisdom and audacity.
"Whatever we do," Verena had said on several occasions, "we must not let Penelope out of the nursery until she is quite eight years old. She is so much the cleverest of us that she'd simply turn us all round her little finger. She must stay with nurse as long as possible."
"I know what you are talking about," said Penelope. "It's about her, and she's coming to-morrow. I told nurse, and she said she oughtn't never to come."
"No, that she oughtn't," said nurse. "The child is alluding to Miss Tredgold. She haven't no call here, and I don't know why she is coming."
