there was no door. All was dark, even
panelling. He was not shut in a room but in a box. Nonsense, boxes did
not have beds in them and windows.

And then suddenly he was no longer the clever person who had managed
everything so admirably--who was living two lives with such credit in
both, who was managing a grown man for that grown man's good; but just a
little boy rather badly frightened.

The little shirt was the only thing that helped, and that only gave him
the desperate courage to beat on the panels and shout, "Nurse! Nurse!
Nurse----!"

A crack of light split and opened between two panels, they slid back and
between them the nurse came to him--the nurse with the ruff and the
frilled cap and the kind, wrinkled face.

He got his arms round her big, comfortable waist.

"There, there, my lamb!" she said, petting him. His clothes hung over
her arm, his doublet and little fat breeches, his stockings and the
shoes with rosettes.

"Oh, I _am_ here--oh, I am so glad. I thought I'd got to somewhere
different."

She sat down on the bed and began to dress him, soothing him back to
confidence with gentle touches and pet names.

"Listen," she said, when it came to the silver sugar-loaf buttons of the
doublet. "You must listen carefully. It is a month since you went away."

"But I thought time didn't move--I thought...."

"It was the money upset everything," she said; "it always does upset
everything. I ought to have known. Now attend carefully. No one knows
you have been away. You've seemed to be here, learning and playing and
doing everything like you used. And you're on a visit now to your
cousins at your uncle's town house. And you all have lessons
together--thy tutor gives them. And thy cousins love him no better than
thou dost. All thou hast to do is to forget thy dream, and take up thy
life here--and be slow to speak, for a day or two, till thou hast grown
used to thine own place. Thou'lt have lessons alone to-day. One of the
cousins goes with his mother to be her page and bear her train at the
King's revels at Whitehall, and the other must sit and sew her sampler.
Her mother says she hath run wild too long."

So Dickie had lessons alone with his detested tutor, and his relief from
the panic fear of the morning raised his spirits to a degree that
unfortunately found vent in what was, for him, extreme naughtiness. He
drew a comic picture of his tutor--it really was rather like--with a
scroll coming out of his