Part 1 (1/2)
Consequences.
by E. M. Delafield.
Book I
I
The Game of Consequences
The firelight flickered on the nursery wall, and the children sat round the table, learning the new game which the nursery-maid said they would like ever so, directly they understood it.
”I understand it already,” said Alex, the eldest, tossing her head proudly. ”Look, Barbara, you fold the piece of paper like this, and then give it to Cedric, because he's next to you, and I give mine to you, and Emily gives hers to me. That's right, isn't it, Emily?”
”Quite right, Miss Alex; what a clever girl, to be sure. Here, Master Baby, you can play with me. You're too little to do it all by yourself.”
”He isn't Baby any more. We've got to call him Archie now. The new little sister is Baby,” said Alex dictatorially.
She liked always to be the one to give information, and Emily had only been with them a little while. The children's own nurse would have told her to mind her own business, or to wait till she was asked, before teaching her grandmother, but Emily said complacently:
”To be sure, Miss Alex! and such a big boy as Master Archie is, too. Now you all write down a name of a gentleman.”
”What gentleman?” asked Cedric judicially. He was a little boy of eight, with serious grey eyes and a good deal of dignity.
”Why, any gentleman. Some one you all know.”
”I know, I know.”
Alex, always the most easily excited of them all, scribbled on her piece of paper and began to bounce up and down on her chair.
”Hurry up, Barbara. You're so slow.”
”I don't know who to put.”
Alex began to whisper, and Barbara at once said:
”Nurse doesn't allow us to whisper. It's bad manners.”
”You horrid little prig!”
Alex was furious. Barbara's priggishness always put her into a temper, because she felt it, unconsciously, to be a reflection on her own infallibility as the eldest.
”Miss Barbara,” said Emily angrily, ”it's not for you to say what Nurse allows or doesn't allow; _I'm_ looking after you now. The idea, indeed!”
Barbara's pale, pointed little face grew very red, but she did not cry, as Alex, in spite of her twelve years, would almost certainly have cried at such a snub.
She set her mouth vindictively and shot a very angry look at Alex out of her blue eyes. Then she wrote something on the slip of paper, s.h.i.+elding it with her hand so that her sister could not read it.
Cedric was printing in large capitals, easily legible, but no one was interested in what Cedric wrote.
There was a good deal of whispering between Emily and little Archie, and then the papers were folded up once more and pa.s.sed round the table again.