playfellows. With him
by my side, I now ran merrily about, instead of creeping moodily at
the heels of nurse and her friends. Abundantly occupied in testing the
tricks he knew, and teaching him new ones, I had the less leisure to
listen open-mouthed to cadaverous gossip of the Cadman class. Finally,
when I had bidden him good-night a hundred times, with absolutely
fraternal embraces, I was soothed by the light weight of his head
resting on my foot. He seemed to chase the hideous fancies which had
hitherto passed from nurse's daytime conversation to trouble my night
visions, as he would chase a water-fowl from a reedy marsh, and I
slept--as he did--peacefully.

Nor was this all. My other wish was also to be fulfilled, but not
without some vexations beforehand. It was by a certain air and tone
which my nurse suddenly assumed towards me, and which it is difficult
to describe by any other word than "heighty-teighty," and also by dark
hints of changes which she hoped (but seemed far from believing) would
be for my good, and finally, by downright lamentations and tragic
inquiries as to what she had done to be parted from her boy, and
"could her chickabiddy have the heart to drive away his loving and
faithful nursey," that I learned that it was contemplated to supersede
her by some one else, and that if she did not know that I was to blame
in the matter, she at any rate believed me to have influence enough to
obtain a reversal of the decree. That Mrs. Bundle was to be her
successor I gathered from allusions to "your great fat bouncing women
that would eat their heads off; but as to cleaning out a nursery--let
them see!" But her most masterly stroke was a certain conversation
with Mrs. Cadman carried on in my hearing.

"Have you ever notice, Mrs. Cadman," inquired my bony nurse of her not
less bony visitor--"Have you ever notice how them stout people as
looks so good-natured as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths is
that wicked and cruel underneath?" And then followed a series of
nurse's most ghastly anecdotes, relative to fat mothers who had
ill-treated their children, fat nurses who had nearly been the death
of their unfortunate charges, fat female murderers, and a fat
acquaintance of her own, who was "taken" in apoplexy after a fit of
rage with her husband.

"What a warning! what a moral!" said Mrs. Cadman. She meant it for a
pious observation, but I felt that the warning and the moral were for
me. And not even the