“If it weren’t for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some sense out of the child.”

“I think it’s a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll so much.”

“Well, mum, it’d be difficult to take it from her now.  She’s that wrapped in it.” ...  And so she was....  Rose stood to Angelina for so much more than Rose.

“Oh, Wosie, when will he come again....  P’r’aps never.  And I’m forgetting.  I can’t remember at all about the funny water and the twee with the flowers, and all of it.  Wosie, you ’member—­Whisper.”  And Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.

And then, of course, the crisis arrived.  I am sorry about this part of the story.  Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon hour in the gardens.  Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire.  Her eye wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive hand—­Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of fancy—­the garden was at their service.  But with Aunt Emily how different!  Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics.  Her thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina’s hand; her eyes (they had a “peering” effect, as though they were always searching for something beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking for educational subjects.  And so up and down the paths they went, Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a little faster than she conveniently could.

Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial inflamed her sense of merit.  There came a lovely spring afternoon; the almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even the statues of “Sir Benjamin Bundle” and “General Sir Robinson Cleaver” seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity.  There were many babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them.  Angelina’s eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden within its heart.  Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have enjoyed all this had they been alone.  Her eyes gazed longingly at the almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing, intimate invitation.  “I shall get back—­I shall get back....  He’ll come and take me; I’ll remember all the old things,” she thought.  She and Rose—­what a time they might have if only——­ She glanced up at her aunt.