ot know whether to feel more sorry for the little
girl or the dog; some sort of compassion, he thought, was demanded. It
was a problem picture insoluble over many years of speculation. The
night-nursery seemed always full of Nurse's clothes. Her petticoats were
usually chequered or uniform red, preternaturally bright in contrast
with the blackness of the exterior apparel. The latter of heavy serge or
similar material was often sown with jet bugles which scratched
Michael's face when he played 'Hide-Oh' among the folds of such obvious
concealment. Apart from these petticoats and skirts, the most individual
possession of Nurse's wardrobe was a moon-shaped bustle of faded crimson
which Michael loved to swing from the bedpost whence out of use it was
suspended. There was also in a top drawer, generally unattainable, a
collection of caps threaded with many different velvet ribbons and often
coquettish with lace flowers. Michael was glad when Nurse put on her
best cap, a proceeding which took place just before tea. Her morning cap
was so skimpy as scarcely to hide the unpleasant smoothness of her thin
hair. In the amber summer afternoons or blue spring twilights, Nurse
looked comparatively beautiful under the ample lace, with a softer apron
and a face whose wrinkles were smoothed out by the consciousness of
leisure and the pleasant brown teapot. Mostly, Michael was inclined to
compare her with a monkey, so squab was her nose, so long her upper lip,
and such a multitude of deep furrows twisted up her countenance. That
Nurse was ever young, Michael could not bring himself to believe, and
daguerreotypes framed in tin-foil which she produced as evidence of
youth from a square box inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, never convinced him
as a chromolithograph might have convinced him. At the same time the
stories of her childhood, which Nurse was sometimes persuaded to tell,
were very enthralling; moreover, by the fact of her obvious antiquity,
they had the dimness and mystery of old fairy-tales.

On the whole Michael was happy in his pea-green nursery. He was well
guarded by the iron soldiers of his cot. He liked the warmth and the
smallness of the room; he liked to be able to climb from his cot on to
Nurse's bed, from Nurse's bed into Stella's cot, and with this expanse
of safe territory he felt sorry for the chilly and desolate and
dangerous floor. Michael also liked the day-nursery. To begin with, it
possessed a curious and romantic sha