The children—­Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy—­were, of course, in the nursery.  The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled “The Shadow of Ashlydyat.”  It is entirely impossible to present any adequate idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery.  One must think of the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known—­say, a Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect.  Then one must place them together and confess defeat.  Mrs. Rochester was not, as I have said, very frequently to be found in her children’s nursery, but she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret, with her spirit.  Toys were everywhere—­dolls and trains and soldiers, bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with goldfish.  There were many other things, forgotten by me.

Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to be reading that fascinating story, “The Pillars of the House.”  I say pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away.  There was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but you never knew who might come in.

The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy, and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one, namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their Squaws.  Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing performance.

Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party.  He had possessed himself of some of Dorothy’s dolls’ tea things, he had begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time to time into such sentences as, “Do have a little more tweacle pudding, Mrs. Smith.  It’s the best tweacle,” and, “It’s a nice day, isn’t it!” but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of “Oh!  Roger, you’re pulling my hair,” or “I won’t play if you don’t look out!”

It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim’s festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window panes diverted his attention.  Once he broke into a chuckle.  “Isn’t they banging on the window, Lucy?” he said, but she was, it appeared, too deeply engaged to answer him.  He found that, in a moment of abstraction, he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that the party was over.  “Good-bye, Mrs. Smith.  It was really nice of you to come.  Good-bye, dear, Mrs. ——­ I think the wain almost isn’t coming now.”