Nurse was a bit vexed with them--missy's frock was torn and----"
"Yes," interrupted Grandmamma--Grandpapa seeing her occupied had at last
made up his mind to open his newspaper--"Yes, I was thinking of that.
They told us about it, and they asked what it meant to be 'a great
charge;' they had heard Nurse say that to you. She is a good woman, I
feel sure, Barbara, but perhaps she is a little too strict. I have got
it so on my mind that they had some little trouble they did not like to
tell about, and that that, somehow, has had to do with it all."
"You don't mean, ma'am, that such tiny trots as that would have run away
on purpose?" said Barbara in surprise. "Oh no, they'd never have done
that."
"No, I do not mean that exactly," said Grandmamma. "I do not think I
know rightly what I mean. Dear, dear, I wish Dymock would keep Toby
away," she added. "You don't know how he startles me--every time he
comes close to me I fancy somehow it is the children," and Grandmamma
looked so uneasy and nervous that Barbara quietly took up the little dog
and put him out of the room. "And, Barbara, you had no reason for coming
to see me? Except, of course--I was forgetting--that you are going
away."
"Only for a few days, ma'am," Barbara replied. "I had a letter from my
niece--leastways from her husband--the niece who lives over near
Monkhaven--yesterday.
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