Part 2 (2/2)

For very often, while deftly getting through her task, Grandmamma would talk so nicely to the children, telling them stories of the time when she was a little girl herself, and of all the changes between those far-away days and ”now”; of the strange, wonderful places she had visited with Grandpapa; of cities with mosques and minarets gleaming against the intense blue sky of the East in the too splendid, scorching suns.h.i.+ne that no one who has not seen it can picture to himself; of rides--weary endless rides--night after night through the desert; or voyages of months and months together across the pathless ocean. They would sit, the little brother and sister, staring up at her with their great solemn blue eyes, as if they would never tire of listening--how wonderfully wise Grandpapa and Grandmamma must be!--”Surely,” said little Pamela one day with a great sigh, ”surely Grandmamma must know _everyfing_;” while Duke's breast swelled with the thought that he too, like his father and grandfather before him, would journey some day to those distant lands, there, if need were, like them ”to fight for the king.” For there were times at which ”bruvver” was quite determined to be a soldier, though at others--the afternoon, for instance, when the young bull poked his head through the hedge and shook it at him and Pamela, and Duke's toy-sword had unfortunately been left at home in the nursery--he did not feel quite so sure about it!

But on this particular morning the little pair were less interested and talkative than usual. They sat so quiet while Grandmamma made her arrangements that her attention was aroused.

”You are very silent little mice, this morning,” she said. ”Is it because poor Nurse is ill that you seem in such low spirits?”

Duke and Pamela looked at each other. It would have been so easy to say ”yes,” and Grandmamma would have thought them so kind-hearted and sympathising! Once one has swerved a little bit from the straight exact road and begun to go down-hill even in the least, it is so tempting to go on a little farther--so much less difficult than to stop short, or, still more, to try to go back again. But these children were so unused to say anything not quite true that they hesitated, and this hesitation saved them from making another step in the wrong direction.

”I wasn't finking of Nurse, Grandmamma,” said Pamela at last in rather a low voice.

”Nor I wasn't neither,” said Duke, taking courage by her example.

”That's all right, then,” said Grandmamma cheerfully, not having noticed anything unusual in their tone. ”Poor Nurse, we are sorry for her to be ill, but I don't think it will be anything very bad. And I am sure you will try to be _very_ good.”

”Yes, Grandmamma,” said the two voices together, but less confidently and more timidly than usual. This time their tone caught the old lady's attention.

”There's something on their minds,” she said to herself. But she was a wise old lady, and thought it better to wait a while before trying to find out what it was.

”When I was a little girl,” she began--and the children p.r.i.c.ked up their ears--”when I was a little girl I remember once that our nurse was ill, or she had to go away to see some friend who was ill, and, as I was the eldest of several little brothers and sisters, I had to help to take care of them. I had always thought it would be very pleasant to be without a nurse, though we liked ours very well, and to be able to do just as we wished. But I shall never forget how pleased I was to see her come back again,” and Grandmamma laughed a little at the recollection.

”Why were you so pleased, Grandmamma?” asked Pamela. ”Had you done anyfing naughty?”

”_That_ wouldn't have made Grandmamma pleased for her nurse to come back,” said Duke; and a sudden thought of how ”us” would have felt had Nurse come into the room just as Toby was licking up the last of the bread and milk made his face grow rosy.

”We had not meant to be naughty,” said Grandmamma, ”but we were not fit to manage for ourselves. Each of us wanted to do a different way, and we were like a flock of poor little sheep without a shepherd. You do not know, children, what a comfort it is to have rules one must obey.”

”But big people don't have to obey,” said Duke.

”Ah yes, they have; and when they try to think they have not, then it is that everything goes wrong with them;” and seeing by the look in the two little faces that they were still puzzled--”People have to _obey_ all their lives if they want to be happy,” she went on. ”Long after they have no more nurses or fathers and mothers--or grandpapas and grandmammas,” with a little smile, which somehow made the corners of Duke's and Pamela's mouths go down. ”The use of all those when we are young is only to teach us what obeying means--to teach us to listen to the voice we should _always_ obey----” and Grandmamma stopped a minute and looked at ”us.”

”G.o.d,” said the two very solemnly.

”Yes; but G.o.d speaks to us in different ways, and we have to learn to know His voice. And the way of all in which we _most_ need to know it is when it speaks to us in our own hearts--in ourselves. It would be a very poor sort of being good or obeying if it was only so long as somebody else was beside us telling us what to do and looking to see that we did it.”

”Yes,” said the two little voices together, lower and still more solemn.

”As, for instance, this morning if, just because Nurse was not with you, you had done anything you would not have done had she been there,” said Grandmamma, looking keenly at the two flushed faces.

Another--”Yes, Grandmamma.”

”Or,” went on the old lady, speaking more slowly, ”a worse kind of disobeying--the telling what is not really true; lots of people, big as well as little, do that, and sometimes they try to make _themselves_ think, by all sorts of twistings and turnings, that they have not done so when their own hearts know they _have_. For the voice inside us is _very_ hard to silence or deceive--I think sometimes indeed it _never_ is silenced, but that our ears grow deaf to it--that we make them so.

But this is very grave talk for you, my dear children--too grave and difficult perhaps. I am getting so old that I suppose I sometimes forget how very young you are! And here come your own little cups and saucers, nicely rinsed out, and waiting to be wiped dry.”

”Thank you, Grandmamma,” said Duke.

”Fank you, Grandmamma,” said Pamela.

And the two small pairs of hands set to work carefully at their daily task. But they did not speak or ask Grandmamma any questions, and somehow the old lady felt a little uneasy, for, even though they were on the whole quiet children, this morning there was a sort of constraint about them which she did not understand. And they, on their side, felt glad when the ”was.h.i.+ng-up” was over and Grandmamma sent them upstairs to their nursery, where they had lessons every morning for two hours with a young girl whose mother had a sort of dame school in the village.

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