Page:Across the Stream.djvu/223

Rh flibertigibbits. You were no trouble at all; and see how quick you got well."

Archie rocked himself backwards and forwards for a minute in silence.

"I wish I could remember Martin," he said at length. "Tell me something about Martin."

"Eh, dear lamb!" said she. "Couldn't he be naughty too, when the fit took him! But then he got ill, and many's the time when I've longed for him to be naughty again, and he hadn't the spirit for it. He didn't want to die, and right up to the end he thought he'd get better. Your papa never loved any one like he loved him, and nobody could help loving him. He was like a April morning, dear—sunshine one minute and squalls the next. And there was months, Master Archie, when we thought you would follow him."

Blessington grew a little tearful, with the sweet, easy tears of old-age over this, and Archie changed the subject.

"And Abracadabra, now?" he asked. "What evenings those birthdays evenings were, weren't they? I wish Abracadabra came still, bringing all we wanted. What would you choose, Blessington?"

Blessington beamed again.

"Eh, I know what I'd choose," she said. "I'd choose a nice young lady to come here, and you and she take a fancy to each other, dear. That's what I'd choose. Isn't there some nice young lady, Master Archie?"

Archie stopped his rocking for a moment, and a bitter word was on the end of his tongue. Then he smiled back at his nurse's radiant face.

"I'm going to marry you, Blessington," he said, "when you're old enough. Don't you go flirting with anybody else now."

Blessington gave a little cackle of soft, toothless laughter.