"Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older--
and we are older now."

Still no word.

"We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember
once you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you
cried when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how
your mother said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and
sent it away, and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said
that p'r'aps we'll have one one day?--and now we've got one."

He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at
them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral
tones:

"Either it goes, or I go."

The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go? . . .
They could hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot
go?

"Oh, Nurse, would you really?" whispered Mary. This innocent remark
of Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than
was, perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of
colour rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have
said is uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further
developed by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of
half of Uncle Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting