the
stairs were narrow, the room dingy and vulgar after the rooms at home,
and as I wept I wished I had never come.

At this day, I am glad that I had the courtesy to restrain my
feelings, and not to damp the delighted welcome of Nurse and her
friends by an insulting avowal of my disappointment. I really was not
a spoilt child; and indeed, the insolent and undisciplined egotism of
many children "now-a-days," was not often tolerated by the past
generation. As I sat silent and sad, Nurse Bundle ransacked her bag,
muttering, "What a fool I be, to be sure!" and anon produced a flask
of wine, from which she filled a wine-glass with a very big leg, which
was one of the chimney ornaments. I emptied it in obedience to her
orders, and in a few minutes my tears ceased, and I began to take a
more cheerful view of the wallpaper and the antimacassars.

"What a pretty cat!" I said, at last. The said cat, a beauty, was
lying on the hearthrug.

"Isn't it a beauty, love?" said Nurse Bundle; "and look, my dear, at
your own little dog lying as good as gold in the rocking-chair, and
not so much as looking at puss."

Rubens did not _quite_ deserve this panegyric. He lay in his chair
without touching puss, it is true; but he kept his eye firmly and
constantly fixed upon her, only restrained from an attack by my known
objection to such proceedings, and by the immovable composure of the
good lady herself. Half a movement of encouragement on my part, half a
movement of flight on the cat's, and Rubens would have been after her.
All this was so plainly expressed in his attitude, that I burst out
laughing. Rubens chose to take this as a sound to the chase, and only
by the most peremptory orders could I induce him to keep quiet. As to
the cat, I saw one convulsive twitch of the very tip of her tail,
eloquent of wrath; otherwise she never moved.

"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Bundle, "suppose you come upstairs to bed,
and get a good night's rest. I can hear Jemima a-shaking of the coals
in the warming-pan now, on the stairs."

Warming-pans were not much used at home, and I was greatly interested
in the brazen implement which Jemima wielded so dexterously.

"It's like an ironing cloth," was my comment when I got between the
sheets. I had often warmed my hands on the table where Nurse ironed my
collars at home.

Rubens duly came to bed; and I fell asleep, well satisfied on the
whole with Oakford and the saddler's household.

CHAPTER XI