“Perhaps no one will have me,” I said.

“Well, they might; people marry you least expect to.  Look at Maria Dewberry; you would never have —­”

The door opened, or we will presume so, as my knowledge of Maria’s movements after her surprising marriage is nil.

Looking over houses is not without excitement, and certainly not without surprises; but I was spared the experience some unknown person had who came one day to see our house when we all lived in London, but happened to be away.  Having a house in the country, we very often did let the London house, which accounts for the agent’s mistake.

One day, just as Archie was going out, he found on the doorstep a charming lady with a very pretty daughter.

“May we see over the house?” she asked.

“Certainly,” said Archie.

He showed them all over the house, from cellar to garret.  He says he initiated them into the mysteries of the dark cupboard, and he says he showed them everything of historic interest in the family.  The daughter, he vows, was tremendously interested.  When they had seen everything and Archie had brought them back to the hall, the charming mother said, “And when is the house to let?”

“Oh! it’s not to let,” said Archie.

He says he assured them it was no trouble at all, etc.!

In every small house we went, Nannie trudged laboriously up to the top, and I heard her murmuring, “Night, day,” as she went backward and forward, from one room to the other.  At last we found a small house in Chelsea of which she thoroughly approved.  She couldn’t exonerate the agent from all blame in saying that there were views of the river from the window.  “Not but what there might be if we, leaned out far enough, but we can’t because of the bars.”  It was the very bars that had attracted her in the first instance, from the outside.  Bars meant a nursery.  Iron bars may not make a cage, but they undoubtedly make a nursery.

She stood at the top window and looked out on the green trees, and a blackbird was obliging enough, at that very moment, to sing a love-song.  Perhaps it was about nurseries, and Nannie understood it; at all events she decided there and then to take the house. " Of course, she said, “I know there’s no nursery wanted, but I don’t hold with houses that can’t have nurseries in them, if they want to.”  That gave me an idea!  It came like a flash.  Nannie should have her nursery!

Of course this all happened some years ago, when the home at Hames was broken up.  With the help of Diana I managed it beautifully.  It was kept a dead secret.  Diana collected, or rather allowed me to collect, all the things Nannie had specially loved in the home nursery, which I am sure cost Diana a pang, as she was very anxious her children should abide by tradition and grow up among the things their father had loved as a boy; but she sent them all, even the rocking-horse, to me for my nursery.