ernal duets.

The withdrawal of Madame Flauve from the superintendence of Michael's
afternoon walks was apparently a great blow to Nurse. She had acquired a
habit either of retiring to the night-nursery or of popping out of the
back-door on secret errands. Stella in the charge of Annie was perfectly
happy upstairs, and Nurse resented very strongly Michael's enquiries as
to where she was going. Michael had no ulterior reasons for his
questions. He was sincerely interested by these afternoon walks of
Nurse, and speculated often upon her destination. She would always
return very cheerful and would often bring him home small presents--a
dark blue bird on a pin at boat-race time (for Nurse was staunchly
Oxford), a penny packet of stamps most of which were duplicates inside,
penny illustrated books of Cock Robin or Tom Thumb; and once she brought
him home a Night Companion. This Night Companion was a club-headed
stick, very powerful and warranted to secure the owner from a murderous
attack. It was one of a row in the window of a neighbouring
umbrella-shop, a long row of Night Companions that cost one shilling
each. Michael liked his stick and took it to bed with him and was
comforted, when he woke up, by the sight of its knotted head upon the
bolster. He grew very intimate with the stick and endowed it with
character and temperament and humanity. He would often stare at the
still unpurchased Night Companions in the shop, trying to discover if
any other of them were so beneficent and so pleasant a companion as his
own. In time he took a fancy to another, and begged Nurse to be allowed
to buy this for Stella. Nurse was gratified by his appreciation of her
present and gave him leave to break into the ten-shilling piece to endow
Stella with a Companion. Michael himself carried it home, wrapped in a
flimsy brown paper and tied up as he thought unnecessarily with a flimsy
string. Stella was told to take it to bed with her and did so, but by
some accident grazed her forehead on the Night Companion's knotty head
and cried so much that it was taken away from her. This was all the
better for Michael who thenceforth had two Night Companions--one on
either side of him to guard him from the door and the window.

Still, notwithstanding these presents, Nurse grew more and more
irritable to find Michael watching her exits from and entrances into 64
Carlington Road. Once, she was so much annoyed to see Michael's face
pressed against the pane