tea, and Nannie's words, allied to Nannie's face when she entered
without knocking, had caused the silly, invertebrate woman to take
immediate action for once in her life.

Not for anything would she confess it, but she wished now she had
listened to Nannie when, just a year ago, she had so fervently urged a
visit to the doctor the first time she had discovered the baby girl
walking downstairs one step at a time in her sleep.

She remembered the way the ever-changing house-parlourmaids had
furtively looked at the child when she came in to dessert; how one
after the other they had given notice, declaring that although they
really loved the child their nerves would not stand the ever-recurring
shock of finding her sitting in some corner in the dark; or the
pattering of her little feet on the stairs when she occasionally evaded
the nurse and walked about the house in her sleep; and she remembered
how other nurses who brought baby visitors to tea had watched the
child, surreptitiously touching their foreheads and wagging their heads
at each other.

But, as is the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off
until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same
very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her
kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour after hour until the
house-parlourmaid had rushed in and given instant notice, with the
unsolicited information that the servants thought, and the neighbours
said, the child was mad and ought to be sent to a home.

Then, indeed, had terror suddenly tweaked Susan Hetth's heart, the
social one, the maternal one having long since atrophied through want