It was almost impossible to retain my gravity. I could see Miss
Lucas smiling in the window seat. Joseph and his brethren--what a
droll idea for a child! But I did not know then that Flurry's dolls
had to sustain a variety of bewildering parts. When I next saw them
the smart turbans were all taken off the flaxen heads, a few dejected
sawdust bodies hung limply round a miller's cart. "Ancient Britons,"
whispered Flurry. "Nurse would not let me paint them blue, but they
did not wear clothes then, you know." In fact, our history lesson was
generally followed by a series of touching _tableaux vivants_, the
dolls sustaining their parts in several moving scenes of "Alfred and
the Cakes," "Hubert and Arthur," and once "the Battle of Cressy."

Flurry and I parted the best of friends; and when we joined Uncle
Geoffrey in the drawing-room I was quite ready to enter on my duties
at once.

Miss Lucas stipulated for my services from ten till five; a few
simple lessons in the morning were to be followed by a walk, I was to
lunch with them, and in the afternoon I was to amuse Flurry or teach
her a little--just as I liked.

"The fact is," observed Miss Lucas, as I looked a little surprised
at this programme, "Nurse is a worthy woman, and we are all very much
attached to her; but she is very ignorant, and my brother will not
have Flurry thrown too much on her companionship. He wishes me to
find some one who will take the sole charge of the child through the
day; in the evening she always comes down to her father and sits with
him until her bedtime." And then she named what seemed to me a
surprisingly large sum for services. What! all that for playing with
Flurry, and giving her a few baby lessons; poor Carrie could not have