The elder girl, whose dress had been the subject of Jack’s attack, found that it was slightly torn, and she turned to her sister and said:
“What an insufferable little dog, and what a still more insufferable girl!”
“Oh, hush, Flora!” said the girl so addressed.
“Where shall I send the flowers to, miss?” asked the man who was serving the girls, bending over the counter as he did so.
“Send them to Mrs. Aspray, Court Mansions,” was the elder girl’s reply. “Be quick, please,” she added; “you had better send a man round with all those flowers in pots. We are expecting company this afternoon, and mother says the flowers must arrive before two o’clock.”
The man promised; and the girls, the elder one still very cross and angry, left the shop.
Just as she was doing so she flashed her handsome blue eyes in Nan’s direction, and Nan gave her back quite as indignant a glance.
“Well, miss, and what can I do for you?” said the shopman, now turning to Nan.
Nan gave her order; the man promised to attend to it immediately, and the little girl returned home.
Now, how it happened she never knew, but going back, she trod suddenly on a piece of orange-peel. The next moment she was lying on her face, white and sick and dizzy with pain. She had sprained her ankle. For a moment or two she lay still. Then a man rushed up and raised her to her feet. She made a frantic effort, and leaning on his arm, got as far back as Mrs. Richmond’s house. When the door was opened for her, great was the astonishment of Caroline the parlour-maid.
“Why, Miss Nan,” she cried, “how white you are! What has happened?”
“I have sprained my foot. I fell when I was out; I trod on a piece of orange-peel.”
“And you were out, miss, all alone?”
“Yes, yes; Susan was not able to come.”
“My mistress will be angry, miss.”
“I am ever so sorry; but please don’t tell her – please don’t, Caroline.”
“She will find out when she discovers that you have sprained your foot.”
“Please don’t tell her; I will manage somehow,” said the child; and she limped upstairs.
In consequence of her escapade, however, she could not possibly go to the country that day. Kitty and Nora decided that they would not tell about her naughtiness in going out alone. They were really fond of Nan. They said that she was very silly to have disobeyed their mother, and very wrong, but they would make some excuse about her not going into the country; and as Mrs. Richmond was extremely busy, what with Augusta’s expected arrival and her visitors of that afternoon, it was unlikely that she would miss Nan or say anything about her. Accordingly, at half-past twelve Miss Roy and the two little Richmonds started alone for their country expedition, and Nan was left in the schoolroom.
CHAPTER VIII. – PIP
The sunshiny morning brought a still more lovely afternoon in its train. Nan felt cross and discontented. She had looked forward for long to that happy day in Shirley Woods; she had a passionate love for all flowers, and for primroses in especial. She had gone primrose-hunting when quite a little child with her mother in the happy, happy days when they were not so poor, and mother was not so ill, and their home had been in the country. As she lay in bed at night for the past week she had thought of the intense joy of picking primroses.
“Even if mother is dead,” she had said to herself, “I shall love to hold them in my hands; and if it is true that mother is in a beautiful country where there are spring flowers that never wither, perhaps she is picking primroses too.”
But now everything had come to an end. She had been good-natured although disobedient, and her punishment had come. Her foot did not ache very badly except when she walked on it; still, she felt very impatient alone in the schoolroom – forgotten, doubtless, by every one else in the house, for even nurse had taken the opportunity to go and visit an old friend, and Susan the housemaid just peeped in once to see if there were enough coals to put on the fire. But the day was too warm for Nan to need much fire. Her book did not interest her; she knew her lessons already by heart. She did not care to practise on the piano. Even Jack tired her by his constant and officious attentions.
“Oh dear!” she said to herself, “was there ever such a long afternoon? How I wish Phoebe would come to see me! How I wish that I had my darling Sophia Maria again! I might make some more clothes for her; there are all kinds of odds and ends in nurse’s basket, and she would not mind my rummaging in it. But there! I really have not the energy. How dull it is! I wonder if Kitty will bring me a special bunch of primroses, and if they will be big ones with long stems, the sort mother used to love. Oh dear! I am tired.”
She yawned, shut up the book which she had already read, and taking Jack into her arras, kissed him on his little round forehead.
Just then a memory came to her. Kitty had been anxious about one of the white rats that morning. It was her favourite rat, Pip. Pip had not been well; he had refused his breakfast – an almost unheard-of thing in the annals of the rat world. Even a nut did not tempt him, and he had turned away from a piece of cheese. Kitty adored Pip. He was a large, rather dangerous rat. Nan as a rule kept a wide berth when she was asked to visit the rats and mice, for Pip had very sharp teeth, and a vicious way of darting at you and giving you a sharp bite. But Nan now thought of him with much interest. The very last thing Kitty had said before she went out was this:
“I sha’n’t enjoy myself very much after all, for Pip is not well. I cannot think what is the matter with him. I should just break my heart if anything happened to my darling Pip.”
Nan had asked one or two questions, and Kitty had turned round and looked at her.
“Oh! you can do nothing,” she said. “I have put him away from Glitter and Snap. I think he looks very bad indeed; he must have eaten something poisonous. No, please, do not go near the room, Nan, whatever you do, for you know you have not the slightest control over the rats and mice.”
Now Nan thought of the sick rat, and a curious and ever-increasing desire to go and look at him, to find out if he were better, if he had eaten the cheese which Kitty had last tried to tempt him with, took possession of her.
“It can do no harm,” she thought. “I will just go and have a peep; it certainly can do no harm. I shall be very careful; I will just open the door and look in.”
Notwithstanding the pain in her foot, Nan contrived to limp up to the attics. There were five or six attics on the next floor – large rooms, all of them. The smallest one, that facing the stairs, had been given over to the girls for their pets. They owned several boxes of mice, different kinds of breeds – harvest mice, dormice, Japanese mice, white mice. Nan considered all the mice most fascinating. At the opposite side of the room were the cages where the rats reposed.
Nan knew Pip very well by appearance. He was snowy white, had a long, hairless tail, and a little patch of black just behind his left ear. It was a tiny patch of black, and Kitty considered it one of his beauties. Nan opened the door softly now and went in. She had left it a little ajar, not thinking much of what she was doing. When she entered the room her dullness vanished on the spot. She could examine one cage after the other; could poke in her hand and draw it away again when the mice tried to bite her. There were a lot of little baby mice in one cage. She thought it would be nothing short of bliss to examine them, to count them, and to see what they were really like. But of course the sick rat, Pip, must have her first attentions. He was in a cage all alone – by no means a perfect cage, for it was broken at one side. Kitty, however, had secured it against the chance of the rat’s escape by leaning a bit of board up against the broken side. Nan knew nothing of this; she moved the cage so as to get it into a better light, and peering down, looked at the sick rat. He was lying curled up in the bottom of his cage, but the sudden movement and the sight of Nan’s comparatively unfamiliar face gazing