CHAPTER IV
Table of Contents The Return Visit
"IT'S too bad, she won't come!"
Freda stood at the nursery window with Daffy. Their noses were flattened against the panes, and they were gazing disconsolately down the beech avenue.
It was raining fast, softly, persistently, and it did not mean to stop, even though Dreamikins had been asked to tea, and it was now four o'clock. Tea was laid on the round table in the nursery. Freda and Daffy had inspected it very critically when Nurse was out of the room washing Bertie's face and hands and putting him into a clean holland suit in honour of the occasion.
There was a big currant cake in the centre of the table, some strawberry jam, and a large plate of cut bread-and-butter.
"I should like one of Mum's teas," said Daffy, with a sigh, "with sangwiches, and hot tea-cakes, and sugar-iced cakes, and chocolates. I would like Dreamikins to think we had very nice teas."
"And tea in the garden is so much nicer than in a room," sighed Freda.
"But she wouldn't have tea in the garden to-day," said Daffy.
Then they went to the window to watch for her coming. It was Nurse who told them she was sure she would not come, and now they had begun to believe it.
Bertie came up to them, and stretched up on tiptoes to see too.
"There's a b'llella!" he suddenly announced.
And, sure enough, his quick eyes had discovered the big umbrella first. It was waving about rather uncertainly, and two tiny legs and feet were underneath it.
"She's coming, Nurse! And all by herself Dreamikins is allowed to come out to tea alone."
They rushed out of the room and down the stairs to meet her. They found her in the front hail, and Purling, the old butler, was taking her wet umbrella from her.
"She's come in at the front door!" said Daffy, in awed tones.
Dreamikins looked up at them with her radiant smile.
"Did you come all by yourself?" asked Freda.
Dreamikins opened her lips quickly, then shut them tight, and waited quite a moment before she spoke.
"I was just going to say 'Yes,'" she said. "I wanted to say it, but Cherubine pinched me, so I knew I mustn't. Annette brought me to the gate and then I got her to leave me."
"Where did Cherubine pinch you?" asked Daffy curiously.
"Oh, just inside my heart," Dreamikins answered airily. "She gets in there and does what she likes."
Then she kissed her friends rather solemnly, and followed them upstairs to the nursery without saying another word.
Nurse welcomed her quite kindly. Dreamikins in a clean white frock, and her best manners, brought a smile to Nurse's lips.
Bertie hastened up to shake hands. He was very excited over this new visitor, and was ready to be friends with her at once.
Very soon they were sitting round the tea-table. Shyness had suddenly descended upon Freda and Daffy. It was Dreamikins who did most of the talking-Dreamikins and Nurse.
"I think," Dreamikins said, looking at Nurse with one of her sweetest smiles, "that I shall call you H.D. Do you mind if I do?"
"Why H.D.?" demanded Nurse.
"It means something to me," Dreamikins replied. "I always like calling people by letters. I call Mummie D.Q. Not when she scolds me, though-never then!"
She shook her curls with vigour as she spoke. Then she condescended to explain.
"D.Q. means Darling Queen," she said.
Freda and Daffy began to guess under their breath what H.D. meant, but Dreamikins would not tell them. She went on calmly:
"You see, I can't call you Nurse, because you aren't my nurse. I gave up nurses when I was quite little; they changed so often, and Mummie and me got quite tarred of them."
"I hope you weren't a very troublesome little girl," said Nurse sternly. "Children who have no nursery are always spoilt and unruly. I am sorry for their mothers, but all the best families keep their children in the nursery till they go to school."
"Did you have a nurse?" asked Dreamikins.
But Nurse changed the conversation.
When tea was over, Jane cleared away the tea, and Nurse and she left the nursery for a short time. Then the children's tongues ran fast.
"Show me your house; it's such a big one. Let us play hide-and-seek in the passages."
"Nurse won't let us. We can never do anything nice. What is H.D.?"
"Haughty Dragon," said Dreamikins, laughing gaily. "Fibo and I always call people H.D.'s who look like your nurse does. Oh, we must play hide-and-seek. I'll go and ask her."
Away darted Dreamikins, peeping into every room and dancing up and down the passages as if it were all a game. She found Nurse, and actually coaxed the permission she wanted out of her.
"It's a wet afternoon, and if you promise not to spoil or disarrange anything, you can do it," said Nurse.
Then followed a lovely hour. Freda and Daffy and even Bertie were as excited and happy as their little guest. At last the time came when Dreamikins could not be found. Every corner and cupboard in the few rooms in which they were allowed to hide were ransacked. The passages with their queer corners were searched again and again, and the children came to Nurse in the nursery with troubled faces.
"We're quite tired out," said Freda gloomily, "and we think she's climbed up one of the chimneys and got on to the roof."
Nurse bestirred herself.
"She's a mischievous child, I fear. There's such daring in her eye; but it won't do for her to come to harm here."
So Nurse went from room to room, and then at the end of one of the passages thought of a little door which led into the cistern-room. There were steps up inside, and on these steps was a white hair ribbon.
Nurse got agitated, and called aloud, and a weak little voice answered her:
"I'm nearly drownded, but Cherubine is keeping me up."
Sure enough, in the big cistern, drenched to the skin, Dreamikins was clinging with her hands to the top; her feet were on a tiny ledge that mercifully was inside, or the big cistern would indeed have drowned her. She had clambered in, taken off her shoes and stockings, and imagined that the water was not very deep.
"I was so hot, I wanted to paddle. I thought it was a little pond, and then I splashed down ever so far, but I got up again and held on tight and screamed, and I've screamed away all my voice, but Cherubine helped me."
She was certainly exhausted with her wetting and with fright. Nurse got her out with a stern set face, and carried her off to the night-nursery, where she changed all her clothes, gave her a hot drink, and then took her back to her little friends.
"Now, none of you are to leave this room," she said. "It's a mercy we haven't had a death in this house, and it isn't this child's fault that we haven't!"
Dreamikins sat still for five minutes whilst she explained to the others how she had come to be found in such a situation.
"I thought I was going to be drownded, and I asked God to send me a better angel, for Cherubine was too small to help me. But she just managed it, till the H.D. came. And now what shall we play at?"
They settled down to a game of marbles on the nursery floor. But very soon they tired of their game and began to talk again.
"Why do you live in such a big empty house?" questioned Dreamikins.
"Because Dad and Mums are in London," said Freda, "and there's nobody to fill their part of the house."
"I could get some people to fill it," said Dreamikins thoughtfully.
"What kind?" asked Daffy. "We shouldn't take anybody into our house, you know."
"It doesn't really belong to us at all," said Freda hastily. "Bertie will have it one day, and turn us out."
Bertie stared with his round eyes at his sister.
"I won't turn you out," he said. "I couldn't. You're so strong."
Dreamikins' eyes were gazing away into space. She said slowly:
"Fibo and I read a very interessing story in the Bible last night when I went to bed. It was about the good people who are turned into sheep, and the wicked who turn into goats. Goats don't live in heaven-only sheep. And if you want to be a proper sheep you have to do some differcult things. They're differcult for children; grown-up people could do them easily, but I've been thinking we really ought to begin some of them in case we die quickly. I shouldn't like to find myself a goat all of a sudden."
Freda and Daffy were not so fond of Bible stories as Dreamikins seemed to be. They looked bored, and Dreamikins was quick to notice it.
"Now, you just listen to me," she said, with upraised finger, "and I'll tell you what we've got to do. We've got to do six things, and if we do them to the proper people, Jesus will count it that we've done it to Him. Fibo explained it beautifully; he always does. We must give meat to somebody who's hungry, and drink to somebody who's thirsty, and take into our houses a stranger. That's what made me begin to think of it. Fancy how many strangers you could take in this big house! And we must visit somebody who's sick, and somebody who's in prison, and we must give a poor, naked, ragged beggar some clothes."
"We couldn't do it possibly," said Freda emphatically.
But Daffy's eyes began to shine.
"Oh yes, we could; it would be beautiful!" she said.
Dreamikins put her arms round her and hugged her.
"You and me will begin it, and then Freda will, too," she said. "We must. Cherubine will help. She thinks we ought to."
The little heads got close together. Nurse was sewing by the window, so they talked in whispers.
And then, all too soon, Jane appeared, saying that "Miss Broughton's maid" had arrived to take...
