"A FEW CRUMBS AND A LITTLE FRESH WATER."
"Oh bother," said Mary, "it's tea--and nurse come to fetch me. What
shall we do?"--"Yes, yes, nurse," in a louder voice, "I'm coming in one
moment," and this seemed to satisfy nurse, for her steps sounded going
downstairs again. "She needn't open the door without tapping," the
little girl went on, speaking half to herself and half to her visitors
on the window-sill, "I'm not one of the nursery children now. But oh,
Cooies, what shall we do? It would take me ever so long to explain
about Michael and to plan something to put it all right."
"Must you go downstairs at once?" asked Mr Coo. "If you told it to us
very quickly."
But Mary shook her head.
"No--I must go. If I don't, she'll be coming up again, or sending for
me, and I don't want any one to hear us talking. They would laugh at me
so, and say it was all nonsense. They are always calling me so
fanciful."
"I see," said Mr Coo, thoughtfully.
But Mrs Coo did more than think.
"Of course," she said, "there's only one thing to be done. We must come
back again to-morrow."
She spoke just a tiny bit sharply.
"We are very busy," said Mr Coo, "getting settled, you see, and
choosing where our new nest is to be, and returning our neighbours'
calls, and so on."
"All that can stand over," said Mrs Coo. "Just say, my dear, what time
to-morrow will be best."
"I _think_" said Mary, "the best time will be when we come in from our
walk in the morning. The little ones go to bed then for an hour, and
I've had my lessons, and nurse generally tells me to take a book and sit
still, and if it isn't cold she lets me come up to my room, and she
stays in the night nursery to keep Fritz and Twitter and baby from
jumping out of their cots or teasing each other. Yes, please come about
twelve o'clock, and would you like anything to eat?"
"You are very kind," said Mr and Mrs Coo together. "A few crumbs and
a little fresh water, perhaps," and then off they flew.
Mary gazed after them for a moment or two, till their pearly grey wings
were almost out of sight. She felt very happy--it was lovely to have
seen them again; still more lovely to find that the wonderful, rare gift
of being able to understand and talk to them had come to her.
"I won't tell _any one_ about it," she decided, as she ran downstairs.
"They would only laugh and call me fanciful that horrid way. Perhaps
Fritz and Twitter wouldn't; they'd just think it was a sort of fairy
story I was making up for them--and it is a sort of fairy story, only
it's true! But they're too little, they'd repeat it all to nurse, and
of course it would be very wrong to tell them anything they _weren't_ to
tell nurse. _Michael_ wouldn't have laughed at me; at least he wouldn't
have _before_, but now that he thinks I tell what isn't true, he'd do
worse than laugh at me. He'd look shocked again--oh dear!"
And Mary's face, which had been so bright a minute or two ago, grew sad
and grave, but just as she opened the nursery door another thought
struck her.
The Cooies were coming again to-morrow, and she would tell them all
about it, and _they_ would plan something to make it all right; she felt
sure they would.
The three little ones were already seated at the tea-table, and nurse
was filling their cups and helping them to bread-and-butter.
"Maly, Maly," said Fritz, "sit by me."
"No, no, 'aside _me_," said Twitter, a funny little girl with short,
dark hair and bright dark eyes.
"Thide Baba," added "baby," another little fat, fair boy like Fritz.
It was rather nice to be welcomed like this, and Mary's spirits, always
very ready to go up or down, rose again.
"I can't sit `'aside' you all three," she said, drawing in her chair,
"so as Baba-boy has to be next nurse, I'll sit between Fritz and
Twitter."
"And 'mile at Baba ac'oss the table," said the baby.
"Yes, darling, of course I will," said Mary, kindly.
After all, it was easy to forgive Fritz and him for being so fat, when
you found how good-natured they were, though Mary did not think it
_pretty_! Twitter, whose real name was Charlotte, was good-natured,
too, in her own way, but she had a quick temper, and though she was such
a little girl, she was very fond, dreadfully fond, of arguing.
"Once start Miss Twitter," nurse used to say, "and you never know when
she'll stop," and it was much the same with her if she began to cry. It
would go on and on till everybody's patience was worn out, and worst of
all when you thought it had really come to an end, some tiny word or
look even would begin it all again.
Still, on the whole, Mary cared the most for Twitter of her three little
cousins. She was certainly the cleverest, and the most ready to
understand what had come to be called "Miss Mary's fancifulness."
Perhaps, as I have spoken of the children as her cousins, I had better
explain a little about the family in the Square. Mary herself had no
brothers or sisters, and no father or mother; "no nobody," she once said
of herself very pitifully when she was _very_ little, and before she
came to live with her kind relations, who at that time were not in
England. But she had always been very well taken care of by a lady who
long ago had been Mary's own mother's governess, and _now_ she had
several "somebodies," her uncle and aunt and the three little ones, and
best of all, perhaps, Michael, the big brother of sixteen, who had been
her first great friend in her new home. He was then a boy of twelve and
Mary was eight, and boys of twelve sometimes look down on little girls
who are four or five years younger than they are. Not so with Michael,
he _was_ so good and kind. He tried to make the shy little cousin, with
her curly red hair and soft brown eyes, feel "at home" and happy, by
every means in his power, and Mary had never forgotten this, and often
said to herself that she never, never would (and I don't think she ever
will).
Nurse looked at Mary rather curiously as she handed her her tea-cup.
"Was there any one in the room with you, Miss Mary, my dear, when I went
upstairs to fetch you?"
"No," said Mary, but her own tone was perhaps not quite as usual, for
she was thinking to herself if the "no" was quite truthful. Yes it was,
she decided, the Cooies were not in the room, and besides, nurse meant
any _person_--wood-pigeons were not people. So "No," she repeated, more
positively, "why do you ask, nurse?"
"Oh," said nurse, "I may have been mistaken, but I thought I heard you
speaking as I opened the door."
"I daresay I was," said Mary.