Page 5 - upscale flipbook demo

a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim newfoundland dog, called nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the darlings engaged her. She had
always thought children important, however, and the darlings had become
acquainted with her in kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her
spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless
nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their
mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she
was at bath-time; and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges
made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a
genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and
when it needs stocking round your throat. She believed to her last day in
old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt
over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in
propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by
their side when they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if
they strayed. On John’s footer days she never once forgot his sweater, and
she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. there is a room
in the basement of Miss Fulsom’s school where the nurses wait. they sat on
forms, while nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. they
affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she
despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs darling’s
friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael’s pinafore and put
him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out wendy and made a
dash at John’s hair.
no nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and
Mr darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked. He had his position in the city to consider. nana also
troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she did not
admire him. ‘I know she admires you tremendously, George,’ Mrs darling
would assure him, and then she would sign to the children to be specially
nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza,

5