Chapter 2

"You must make up to me, Vernon--make up to me for the suffering your
father has caused me. Oh! my God, what shall I do?"

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Vernon was aware of Katie, silent,
ecstatic, enjoying the scene.

"Come along, ma'am," said Nurse. "You'll only upset the child."

The authority in her voice was so marked this time that Vernon's mother
succumbed to it. Leaning weakly on Nurse's arm, she allowed herself to
be led from the room.

Nurse returned a few minutes later very red in the face.

"My," said Katie, "didn't she take on? Regular hysterics--that's what
they call it! Well, this has been a to-do! You don't think she'll do
a mischief to herself, do you? Those nasty ponds in the garden. The
Master is a one--not that he hasn't a lot to put up with from Her. All
them scenes and tantrums----"

"That'll do, my girl," said Nurse. "You can get back to your work, and
under-servants discussing a matter of this kind with their betters is
a thing that I've never known take place in a gentleman's house. Your
mother ought to have trained you better."

With a toss of her head, Katie withdrew. Nurse moved round the nursery
table, shifting cups and plates with unwonted sharpness. Her lips
moved, muttering to herself.

"Putting ideas into the child's head. I've no patience with it...."

chapter 3

A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name
was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being More Suitable. This
puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation.

"There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and
names that are suitable for servants. That's all there is to it."

"Then why is her real name Isabel?"

"There are people who when they christen their children set themselves
up to ape their betters."

The word "ape" had a distracting influence on Vernon. Apes were
monkeys. Did people christen their children at the Zoo?

"I thought people were christened in church."

"So they are, Master Vernon."

Very puzzling. Why was everything so puzzling? Why were things more
puzzling than they used to be? Why did one person tell you one thing
and another person something quite different?

"Nurse, how do babies come?"

"You've asked me that before, Master Vernon. The little angels bring
them in the night through the window."

"That Am-am-am----"

"Don't stammer, Master Vernon."

"Amenkun lady who came--she said I was found under a gooseberry bush."

"That's the way they do with American babies," said Nurse serenely.

Vernon heaved a sigh of relief. Of course! He felt a throb of gratitude
to Nurse. She always knew. She made the unsteady swaying universe stand
still again. And she never laughed. His mother did. He had heard her
say to other ladies: "He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen
to this.... Aren't children funny and adorable."

But Vernon couldn't see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just
wanted to know. You'd got to _know_. That was part of growing up.
When you were grown up you knew everything and had gold sovereigns in
your purse.

_2_

The world went on widening.

There were, for instance, uncles and aunts.

Uncle Sydney was Mummy's brother. He was short and stout and had rather
a red face. He had a habit of humming tunes and of rattling the money
in his trouser pockets. He was fond of making jokes, but Vernon did
not always think his jokes very funny.

"Supposing," Uncle Sydney would say, "I were to put on your hat. Hey?
What should I look like, do you think?"

Curious, the questions grown-up people asked! Curious--and also
difficult, because if there was one thing that Nurse was always
impressing upon Vernon, it was that little boys must never make
personal remarks.

"Come now," said Uncle Sydney perseveringly. "What should I look like?
There--" he snatched up the linen affair in question and balanced it on
top of his head--"what do I look like, eh?"

Well, if one must answer, one must. Vernon said politely and a little
wearily:

"I think you look rather silly."

"That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra," said Uncle Sydney to
his mother. "No sense of humour at all. A pity."

Aunt Nina, Father's sister, was quite different.

She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer's day, and she had a soft
voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues--she didn't kiss you
when you didn't want to be kissed, and she didn't insist on making
jokes. But she didn't come very often to Abbots Puissants.

She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first
made him realize that one could master the Beast.

The Beast lived in the big drawing room. It had four legs and a shiny
brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought, when
he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From
his earliest memory Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by the
Beast. For if you irritated the Beast it made strange noises, an angry
growling or a shrill angry wail--and somehow those noises hurt you more
than anything in the world could. They hurt you right down in your
inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes
sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment you couldn't go
away.

When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons he always thought of
them as like the Beast. And some of the best games with Mr. Green were
where they killed the Beast--Vernon plunging a sword into his brown
shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.

Now that he was a big boy he knew better, of course. He knew that the
Beast's name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked
its teeth, that was called "playingthepiano"! and that ladies did
it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart he was still
afraid and dreamed sometimes of the Beast pursuing him up the nursery
stairs--and he would wake up screaming.

In his dreams the Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage,
and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.

Mummy sometimes did "playingthepiano," and that Vernon could just bear
with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by
what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.

Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He
and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and
chocolate éclairs.

His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat
down on the music stool and was playing idly.

Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked up at last to
see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs
shaking his small body. She stopped.

"What's the matter, Vernon?"

"I 'ate it," sobbed Vernon. "I 'ate it. I 'ate it. It hurts me
_here_." His hands clasped his stomach.

Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.

"Isn't it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer."

"Why doesn't he go away if he hates it?" said Nina.

"I can't," sobbed Vernon.

"Isn't it ridiculous?" said Myra.

"I think it's rather interesting."

"Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to
show Vernon chopsticks the other day, but he wasn't a bit amused."

Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.

"I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical," said Myra in
an aggrieved voice. "I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight
years old."

"Oh! well," said Nina vaguely. "There are different ways of being
musical."

Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre
family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was
not. Vernon clearly was not.

_3_

Nurse's mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe.
Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of
Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested,
stood near by, and out of his interest asked questions.

"Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?"

"Of course not, Master Vernon! A hundred indeed!"

"Do you think she is going to die?" continued Vernon, longing to be
kind and understand.

Cook's mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she
said sharply:

"The boot bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my
girl."

"Nurse, will your mother----"

"I haven't time to be answering questions, Master Vernon."

Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave
himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn't a
hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he
had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being
of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a
strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human
being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.

The universe shifted--values were readjusted. Nurse, God, and Mr.
Green--all three receded, becoming vaguer and more blurred. Mummy, his
father, even Aunt Nina--they seemed to matter more. Especially Mummy.
Mummy was like the princesses with long beautiful golden hair. He
would like to fight a dragon for Mummy--a brown shiny dragon like the
Beast.

What was the word--the magic word? Brumagem--that was it--Brumagem.
An enchanting word! The Princess Brumagem! A word to be repeated over
to himself softly and secretly at night at the same time as Damn and
Corsets.

But never, never, never must Mummy hear it, because he knew only too
well that she would laugh--she always laughed, the kind of laugh that
made you shrivel up inside and want to wriggle. And she would say
things--she always said things, just the kind of things you hated.
"Aren't children too _funny_?"

And Vernon knew that he wasn't funny. He didn't like funny
things--Uncle Sydney had said so. If only Mummy wouldn't....

Sitting on the slippery chintz he frowned perplexedly. He had a sudden
imperfect glimpse of two Mummies. One, the princess, the beautiful
Mummy that he dreamed about, who was mixed up for him with sunsets and
magic and killing dragons--and the other, the one who laughed and who
said, "Aren't children too _funny_?" Only, of course, they were
the same....

He fidgeted and sighed. Nurse, flushed from the effort of snapping to
her trunk, turned to him kindly.

"What's the matter, Master Vernon?"

"Nothing," said Vernon.

You must always say, "Nothing." You could never tell. Because, if you
did, no one ever knew what you meant....

_4_

Under the reign of Susan Isabel the nursery was quite different. You
could be, and quite frequently were, naughty. Susan told you not to do
things and you did them just the same! Susan would say: "I'll tell your
mother." But she never did.

Susan had at first enjoyed the position and authority she had in
Nurse's absence. Indeed, but for Vernon, she would have continued
to enjoy it. She used to exchange confidences with Katie, the
under-housemaid.

"Don't know what's come over him, I'm sure. He's like a little demon
sometimes. And him so good and well behaved with Mrs. Pascal."

To which Kate replied:

"Ah! she's a oner, she is! Takes you up sharp, doesn't she?"

And then they would whisper and giggle.

"Who's Mrs. Pascal?" Vernon asked one day.

"Well, I never, Master Vernon! Don't you know your own nurse's name?"

So Nurse was Mrs. Pascal. Another shock. She had always been just
Nurse. It was rather as though you had been told that God's name was
Mr. Robinson.

Mrs. Pascal! Nurse! The more you thought of it, the more extraordinary
it seemed. Mrs. Pascal--just like Mummy was Mrs. Deyre and Father was
Mr. Deyre. Strangely enough, Vernon never cogitated on the possibility
of a Mr. Pascal. (Not that there was any such person. The Mrs. was a
tacit recognition of Nurse's position and authority.) Nurse stood alone
in the same magnificence as Mr. Green, who in spite of the hundred
children (and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree) was never thought of by
Vernon as having a Mrs. Green attached to him!

Vernon's inquiring mind wandered in another direction.

"Susan, do you like being called Susan? Wouldn't you like being called
Isabel better?"

Susan (or Isabel) gave her customary giggle.

"It doesn't matter what I like, Master Vernon."

"Why not?"

"People have got to do what they're told in this world."

Vernon was silent. He had thought the same until a few days ago. But he
was beginning to perceive that it was not true. You needn't do as you
were told. It all depended on who told you.

It was not a question of punishment. He was continually being sat on
chairs, stood in the corner, and deprived of sweets by Susan. Nurse, on
the other hand, had only to look at him severely through her spectacles
with a certain expression on her face, and anything but immediate
capitulation was out of the question.

Susan had no authority in her nature, and Vernon knew it. He had
discovered the thrill of successful disobedience. Also, he liked
tormenting Susan. The more worried and flustered and unhappy Susan got,
the more Vernon liked it. He was, as was proper to his years, still in
the Stone Age. He savoured the full pleasure of cruelty.

Susan formed the habit of letting Vernon go out to play in the garden
alone. Being an unattractive girl, she had not Winnie's reasons for
liking the garden. And besides, what harm could possibly come to him?

"You won't go near the ponds, will you, Master Vernon?"

"No," said Vernon, instantly forming the intention to do so.

"You'll play with your hoop like a good boy?"

"Yes."

The nursery was left in peace. Susan heaved a sigh of relief. She
took from a drawer a paper-covered book entitled _The Duke and the
Dairymaid_.

Beating his hoop, Vernon made the tour of the walled fruit garden.
Escaping from his control, the hoop leaped upon a small patch of earth
which was at the moment receiving the meticulous attentions of Hopkins,
the head gardener. Hopkins firmly and authoritatively ordered Vernon
from the spot, and Vernon went. He respected Hopkins.

Abandoning the hoop, Vernon climbed a tree or two. That is to say, he
reached a height of perhaps six feet from the ground, employing all due
precautions. Tiring of this perilous sport, he sat astride a branch and
cogitated as to what to do next.

On the whole, he thought the ponds. Susan having forbidden them, they
had a distinct fascination. Yes, he would go to the ponds. He rose, and
as he did so another idea came into his head, suggested by an unusual
sight.

_The door into the Forest was open!_

_5_

Such a thing had never happened before in Vernon's experience. Again
and again he had secretly tried that door. Always it was locked.

He crept up to it cautiously. The Forest! It stood a few steps away
outside the door. You could plunge straightway into its cool green
depths. Vernon's heart beat faster.

He had always wanted to go into the Forest. Here was his chance. Once
Nurse came back, any such thing would be out of the question.

And still he hesitated. It was not any feeling of disobedience that
held him back. Strictly speaking, he had never been forbidden to go
into the Forest. His childish cunning was all ready with that excuse.

No, it was something else. Fear of the unknown--of those dark leafy
depths. Ancestral memories held him back.

He wanted to go--but he didn't want to go. There might be Things
there--Things like the Beast. Things that came up behind you--that
chased you screaming....

He moved uneasily from one foot to the other.

But Things didn't chase you in the daytime. And Mr. Green lived in
the Forest. Not that Mr. Green was as real as he used to be. Still,
it would be rather jolly to explore and find a place where you would
pretend Mr. Green did live. Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree would each have
a house of his own--small leafy houses.

"Come on, Poodle," said Vernon to an invisible companion. "Have you got
your bow and arrow? That's right. We'll meet Squirrel inside."

He stepped out jauntily. Beside him, plain to Vernon's inner eye, went
Poodle dressed like the picture of Robinson Crusoe in his picture book.

It was wonderful in the Forest--dim and dark and green. Birds sang and
flew from branch to branch. Vernon continued to talk to his friend--a
luxury he did not dare to permit himself often, since someone might
overhear and say, "Isn't he too _funny_? He's pretending he's got
another little boy with him." You had to be so very careful at home.

"We'll get to the Castle by lunch time, Poodle. There are going to be
roasted leopards. Oh! Hullo, here's Squirrel. How are you, Squirrel?
Where's Tree?

"I tell you what. I think it's rather tiring walking. I think we'll
ride."

Steeds were tethered to an adjacent tree. Vernon's was milk white,
Poodle's was coal black--the colour of Squirrel's he couldn't quite
decide.

They galloped forward through the trees. There were deadly dangerous
places, morasses. Snakes hissed at them and lions charged them. But the
faithful steeds did all their riders required of them.

How silly it was playing in the garden--or playing anywhere but
_here_! He'd forgotten what it was like, playing with Mr. Green
and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree. How could you help forgetting things
when people were always reminding you that you were a funny little boy
playing make-believe?

On strutted Vernon, now capering, now marching with solemn dignity. He
was great, he was wonderful! What he needed, though he did not know it
himself, was a tom-tom to beat whilst he sang his own praises.

The Forest! He had always known it would be like this, and it was! In
front of him suddenly appeared a crumbling moss covered wall. The wall
of the Castle! Could anything be more perfect? He began to climb it.

The ascent was easy enough really, though fraught with the most
agreeable and thrilling possibilities of danger. Whether this was Mr.
Green's Castle, or whether it was inhabited by an Ogre who ate human
flesh, Vernon had not yet made up his mind. Either was an entrancing
proposition. On the whole, he inclined to the latter, being at the
moment in a warlike frame of mind. With a flushed face he reached the
summit of the wall and looked over the other side.

And here there enters into the story, for one brief paragraph, Mrs.
Somers West, who was fond of romantic solitude (for short periods)
and had bought Woods Cottage as being "delightfully remote from
anywhere and really, if you know what I mean, in the very heart of the
Forest--at one with Nature!" And since Mrs. Somers West, as well as
being artistic, was musical, she had pulled down a wall, making two
rooms into one, and had thus provided herself with sufficient space to
house a grand piano.

And at the identical moment that Vernon reached the top of the
wall, several perspiring and staggering men were slowly propelling
the aforesaid grand piano toward the window, since it wouldn't go
in by the door. The garden of Woods Cottage was a mere tangle of
undergrowth--wild Nature, as Mrs. Somers West called it. So that all
Vernon saw was the Beast! The Beast, alive and purposeful, slowly
crawling toward him, malign and vengeful....

For a moment he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, with a wild cry, he
fled. Fled along the top of the narrow crumbling wall. The Beast was
behind him, pursuing him.... It was coming, he knew it. He ran--ran
faster than ever. His foot caught in a tangle of ivy. He crashed
downward--falling--falling....

chapter 4

Vernon woke, after a long time, to find himself in bed. It was, of
course, the natural place to be when you woke up, but what wasn't
natural was to have a great hump sticking up in front of you in the
bed. It was whilst he was staring at this that someone spoke to him.
That someone was Dr. Coles, whom Vernon knew quite well.

"Well, well," said Dr. Coles, "and how are we feeling?"

Vernon didn't know how Dr. Coles was feeling. He himself was feeling
rather sick and said so.

"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles.

"And I think I hurt somewhere," said Vernon. "I think I hurt very much."

"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles again--not very helpfully,
Vernon thought.

"Perhaps I'd feel better if I got up," said Vernon. "Can I get up?"

"Not just now, I'm afraid," said the doctor. "You see, you've had a
fall."

"Yes," said Vernon. "The Beast came after me."

"Eh? What's that? The Beast? What Beast?"

"Nothing," said Vernon.

"A dog, I expect," said the doctor. "Jumped at the wall and barked. You
mustn't be afraid of dogs, my boy."

"I'm not," said Vernon.

"And what were you doing so far from home, eh? No business to be where
you were."

"Nobody told me not to," said Vernon.

"Hum, hum, I wonder. Well, I'm afraid you've got to take your
punishment. Do you know, you've broken your leg, my boy?"

"Have I?" Vernon was gratified--enchanted. He had broken his leg. He
felt very important.

"Yes, you'll have to lie here for a bit, and then it will mean crutches
for a while. Do you know what crutches are?"

Yes, Vernon knew. Mr. Jobber, the blacksmith's father, had crutches.
And he was to have crutches! How wonderful!

"Can I try them now?"

Dr. Coles laughed.

"So you like the idea? No. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit. And
you must try and be a brave boy, you know. And then you'll get well
quicker."

"Thank you," said Vernon politely. "I don't think I do feel very well.
Can you take this funny thing out of my bed? I think it would be more
comfortable then."

But it seemed that the funny thing was called a cradle, and that it
couldn't be taken away. And it seemed, too, that Vernon would not be
able to move about in bed because his leg was all tied up to a long
piece of wood. And suddenly it didn't seem a very nice thing to have a
broken leg after all.

Vernon's underlip trembled a little. He was not going to cry--no, he
was a big boy and big boys didn't cry. Nurse said so. And then he
knew that he wanted Nurse--wanted her badly. He wanted her reassuring
presence, her omniscience, her creaking rustling majesty.

"She'll be coming back soon," said Dr. Coles. "Yes, soon. In the
meantime, this nurse is going to look after you--Nurse Frances."

Nurse Frances moved into Vernon's range of vision and Vernon studied
her in silence. She too was starched and crackling; that was all to the
good. But she wasn't big like Nurse. She was thinner than Mummy--as
thin as Aunt Nina. He wasn't sure....

And then he met her eyes--steady eyes, more green than gray, and he
felt, as most people felt, that with Nurse Frances things would be "all
right."

She smiled at him--but not in the way that visitors smiled. It was a
grave smile, friendly but reserved.

"I'm sorry you feel sick," she said. "Would you like some orange juice?"

Vernon considered the matter and said he thought he would. Dr. Coles
went out of the room and Nurse Frances brought him the orange juice
in a most curious-looking cup with a long spout. And it appeared that
Vernon was to drink from the spout.

It made him laugh, but laughing hurt him, and so he stopped. Nurse
Frances suggested he should go to sleep again, but he said he didn't
want to go to sleep.

"Then I shouldn't go to sleep," said Nurse Frances. "I wonder if you
can count how many irises there are on that wall? You start on the
right side, and I'll start on the left side. You can count, can't you?"

Vernon said proudly that he could count up to a hundred.

"That is a lot," said Nurse Frances. "There aren't nearly as many
irises as a hundred. I guess there are seventy-five. Now what do you
guess?"

Vernon guessed that there were fifty. There couldn't, he felt sure,
possibly be more than that. He began to count, but somehow, without
knowing it, his eyelids closed and he slept....

_2_

Noise ... noise and pain. He woke with a start. He felt hot, very
hot, and there was a pain all down one side. And the noise was coming
nearer. It was the noise that one always connected with Mummy.

She came into the room like a whirlwind, a kind of cloak affair
she wore swinging out behind her. She was like a bird--a great big
bird--and like a bird, she swooped down upon him.

"Vernon--my darling--Mummy's own darling! What have they done to you?
How awful! How terrible! My child!"

She was crying. Vernon began to cry too. He was suddenly frightened.
Myra was moaning and weeping.

"My little child. All I have in the world. God, don't take him from me.
Don't take him from me! If he dies I shall die too!"

"Mrs. Deyre----"

"Vernon--Vernon--my baby----"

"Mrs. Deyre--please!"

There was crisp command in the voice rather than appeal.

"Please don't touch him. You will hurt him."

"Hurt him? I? His mother?"

"You don't seem to realize, Mrs. Deyre, that his leg is broken, I must
ask you, please, to leave the room."

"You're hiding something from me. Tell me--tell me--will the leg have
to be amputated?"

A wail came from Vernon. He had not the least idea what "amputated"
meant, but it sounded painful--and more than painful, terrifying. His
wail broke into a scream.

"He's dying!" cried Myra. "He's dying--and they won't tell me. But he
shall die in my arms."

"Mrs. Deyre----"

Somehow Nurse Frances had got between his mother and the bed. She was
holding his mother by the shoulder. Her voice had the tone that Nurse's
had had when speaking to Katie, the under-housemaid.

"Mrs. Deyre, listen to me. You must control yourself. You _must_!"
Then she looked up. Vernon's father was standing in the doorway. "Mr.
Deyre, please take your wife away. I cannot have my patient excited and
upset."

His father nodded--a quiet understanding nod. He just looked at Vernon
once and said: "Bad luck, old chap. I broke an arm once."

The world became suddenly less terrifying. Other people broke legs and
arms. His father had hold of his mother's shoulder, he was leading her
toward the door, speaking to her in a low voice. She was protesting,
arguing, her voice high and shrill with emotion.

"How can you understand? You've never cared for the child like I have.
It takes a mother. How can I leave my child to be looked after by a
stranger? He needs his mother.... You don't understand. I _love_
him. There's nothing like a mother's care--everyone says so."

"Vernon darling"--she broke from her husband's clasp, came back toward
the bed--"you want me, don't you? You want Mummy?"

"I want Nurse," sobbed Vernon. "I want Nurse."

He meant his own Nurse, not Nurse Frances.

"Oh!" said Myra. She stood there quivering.

"Come, my dear," said Vernon's father gently. "Come away."

She leaned against him, and together they passed from the room. Faint
words floated back into the room.

"My own child, to turn from me to a stranger."

Nurse Frances smoothed the sheet and suggested a drink of water.

"Nurse is coming back very soon," she said. "We'll write to her to-day,
shall we? You shall tell me what to say."

A queer new feeling surged over Vernon--a sort of odd gratitude.
Somebody had actually understood....

_3_

When Vernon, later, was to look back upon his childhood, this one
period was to stand out quite clearly from the rest. "The time I broke
my leg" marked a distinct era.

He was to appreciate, too, various small incidents that were accepted
by him at the time as a matter of course. For instance, a rather stormy
interview that took place between Dr. Coles and his mother. Naturally
this did not take place in Vernon's sick room, but Myra's raised voice
penetrated closed doors. Vernon heard indignant exclamations of "I
don't know what you mean by upsetting him.... I consider I ought to
nurse my own child.... Naturally I was distressed--I'm not one of these
people who simply have no heart--no heart at all. Look at Walter--never
turned a hair!"

There were many skirmishes too, not to say pitched battles, fought
between Myra and Nurse Frances. In these cases Nurse Frances always
won, but at a certain cost. Myra Deyre was wildly and furiously jealous
of what she called "the paid nurse." She was forced to submit to Dr.
Coles's dictums, but she did so with a bad grace and with an overt
rudeness that Nurse Frances never seemed to notice.

In after years Vernon remembered nothing of the pain and tedium that
there must have been. He remembered only happy days of playing and
talking as he had never played and talked before. For in Nurse Frances
he found a grown-up who didn't think things "funny" or "quaint."
Somebody who listened sensibly and who made serious and sensible
suggestions. To Nurse Frances he was able to speak of Poodle, Squirrel,
and Tree, and of Mr.