ter Alice, I took tea in
the housekeeper's room. My nurse was out for the evening, but Mrs.
Cadman from the village was of the party, and neither cakes nor
conversation flagged. Mrs. Cadman had hollow eyes, and (on occasion) a
hollow voice, which was very impressive. She wore curl-papers
continually, which once caused me to ask my nurse if she ever took
them out.

"On Sundays she do," said Nurse.

"She's very religious then, I suppose," said I; and I did really think
it a great compliment that she paid to the first day of the week.

I was only just four years old at this time--an age when one is apt to
ask inconvenient questions and to make strange observations--when one
is struggling to understand life through the mist of novelties about
one, and the additional confusion of falsehood which it is so common
to speak or to insinuate without scruple to very young children.

The housekeeper and Mrs. Cadman had conversed for some time after tea
without diverting my attention from the new box of bricks which Mrs.
Bundle (commissioned by my father) had brought from the town for me;
but when I had put all the round arches on the pairs of pillars, and
had made a very successful "Tower of Babel" with cross layers of the
bricks tapering towards the top, I had leisure to look round and
listen.

"I never know'd one with that look as lived," Mrs. Cadman was saying,
in her hollow tone. "It took notice from the first. Mark my words,
ma'am, a sweeter child I never saw, but it's _too_ good and _too_
pretty to be long for this world."

It is difficult to say exactly how much one understands at four years
old, or rather how far one quite comprehends the things one perceives
in part. I understood, or felt, enough of what I heard, and of the
sympathetic sighs that followed Mrs. Cadman's speech, to make me
stumble over the Tower of Babel, and present myself at Mrs. Cadman's
knee with the question--

"Is mamma too pretty and good for this world, Mrs. Cadman?"

I caught her elderly wink as quickly as the housekeeper, to whom it
was directed. I was not completely deceived by her answer.

"Why, bless his dear heart, Master Reginald. Who did he think I was
talking about, love?"

"My new baby sister," said I, without hesitation.

"No such thing, lovey," said the audacious Mrs. Cadman; "housekeeper
and me was talking about Mrs. Jones's little boy."

"Where does Mrs. Jones live?" I asked.

"In London town, my dear."

I sighed. I kn