Page:Robins - My Little Sister.djvu/60

48 upstairs "quite goodly," as we used to say. She looked back and smiled. She was still the most beautiful person we knew. But it was a very waxen beauty now. I must learn not to weary her with insoluble riddles. I went into the dining-room to make her tray ready—I liked doing it myself. Bettina's voice came floating in. She had grown tired of playing proper music. She was singing the nursery rhyme which my mother had set to variations of the tinkling old-world tune:

I thought how strange and wonderful was the simplest, most ordinary little life. There must always be that question: what is going to become of me? I had long known what was the proper thing to happen. I ought to marry Lord Helmstone's heir. And Bettina should marry a prince.

But Lord Helmstone's heir turned out to be a middle-aged cousin with a family. Lord Helmstone himself had only lately taken to coming to Forest Hall—since the laying out of the golf- course. Still less frequently came my lady. Very