rather than of surprise, "that, without exception, you are the
silliest little boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you."

"I am very sorry, nurse," I answered; "I thought--"

"Then," interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations,
"you shouldn't think. London," continued the good dame, her
experience no doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would
be through my understanding of this matter, "is a big town, and you go
there in a train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your
mother that everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your
aunt will leave this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of
you."

"And shan't we come back here ever any more?"

"Never again."

"And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the
pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?"

"Never again." I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It
sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.

"And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or
you, ever any more?" In this moment of the crumbling from under me of
all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey
herself.

"Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And