‘See, there’s Miss Nancarrow!’

Totty was coming over the grass at a little distance, between two companions, girls dressed with an emphasis of Sunday elegance which made her look rather brown and plain by contrast.  Totty never cared to spend much on clothes, a singular feature of her character.  When the three were passing at a distance of twenty yards, Nelly cried out with shrill voice: 

‘Miss Nancarrow!’

‘Hush, child!’ said her father, more annoyed than seemed necessary.  ‘Don’t scream at people in that way.’

Nelly was abashed, but her cry had caught Totty’s ear.  The latter nodded, laughed, and went on with her friends.

‘I say, father,’ Jack began, ‘do you know what I think?’

‘What, boy?’

’Why, I think if you asked Miss Nancarrow to come and take a room in the new house, she would.’

‘Why on earth should I ask her to do such a thing?’ inquired Bunce, laying down his pipe on the grass; it had gone out since Totty’s passing.  He looked at his son with bent brows, and rather fiercely.

’Well, I know I’d like her to, and so would Nelly.  I can get on with Miss Nancarrow, ’cause she’s got so much sense.  I don’t think much of other women.’

Bunce grubbed up roots of grass with his hard, blunt fingers.  Then he took up his pipe again and turned the stem about between his teeth.  And the while he cast glances at Jack, side glances, half savage.

‘What makes you think she’d come?’ he inquired at length, with a blundering attempt at indifference of tone.

‘I talked to her about it the other night.’

’Oh, you did, did you?  And what business had you to talk about such things, I’d like to know?’

‘I don’t see no harm.  I told her we’d all be glad if she’d come.’

‘What the confusion!  And who told you to say any such thing?’

Jack was amazed at the outburst of wrath he had provoked.

‘Well, father,’ he muttered, ’I’ve heard you say yourself that you’d be glad if she was coming.’

’Then I’ll thank you not to repeat what I say.  Leave Miss Nancarrow alone.  If I find you’ve talked to her in that way again, you and me ‘ll quarrel, Jack.’

The boy fell into a fit of sulks, and drew to a little distance, where he lay fiat, beating the earth vigorously with a stick.

Then it strangely happened that someone came round the bushes, in the shadow of which the three were reposing, and that it was no other than Miss Nancarrow, this time unaccompanied.  Bunce did not notice her till she stood before him, then he jumped to his feet.

‘Don’t disturb yourself, Mr. Bunce,’ said Totty, with her usual self-command.  ’I’m only going to have a talk with Nelly, that’s all.’

She sat down on the grass by the little one, and began a grave dialogue on the subject of certain ailments from which the doll had recently recovered.