She wondered how she had thought for a moment of doing such a thing
as writing to a boy like that. She remembered with disgust how
overgrown that boy was, and how his stockings were darned at the
knees; and how she had seen patches of new cloth on his trousers, and
had heard her aunt Maria say that he was so hard on his clothes on
account of his passion for bird-nesting, that it was all his mother
could do to keep him always decent. How could she have thought for a
moment of a bird-nesting sort of boy? She was so thankful that the
baby was a girl. Maria, as sometimes happens, had a rather inverted
system of growth. With most, dolls come first, then boys; with her,
dolls had not come at all. Boys came first, then her little baby
sister, which was to her in the place of a doll, and the boys got
promptly relegated to the background.

Much to Maria's delight, the French nurse, whom she at once disliked
and stood in awe of, only remained until the baby was about two
months old, then a little nurse-girl was engaged. On pleasant days
the nurse-girl, whose name was Josephine, wheeled out the baby in her
little carriage, which was the daintiest thing of the kind to be
found, furnished with a white lace canopy lined with rose-colored
silk. It was on these occasions that Maria showed duplicity. On
Saturdays, when there was no school, she privately and secretly
bribed Josephine, who was herself under the spell of the baby, to go
home and visit her mother, and let her have the privilege of wheeling
it herself. Maria had a small sum every week for her pocket-money,
and a large part of it went to Josephine in the shape of chocolates,
of which she was inordinately fond; in fact, Josephine, who came of
the poor whites, like Gladys Mann, might have been said to be a
chocolate maniac. Maria used to arrange with Josephine to meet her on
a certain corner on Saturdays, and there the transfer was made: