She
was strict in the maintenance of a certain old-fashioned nursery
etiquette, which obliged me to put away my chair after meals, fold my
clothes at bedtime, put away my toys when I had done with them, say
"please," "thank you," grace before and after meals, prayers night and
morning, a hymn in bed, and the Church Catechism on Sunday. She
snubbed the maids who alluded in my presence to things I could not or
should not understand, and she directed her own conversation to me, on
matters suitable to my age, instead of talking over my childish head
to her gossips. The stories of horror and crime, the fore-doomed
babies, the murders, the mysterious whispered communications faded
from my untroubled brain. Nurse Bundle's tales were of the young
masters and misses she had known. Her worst domestic tragedy was about
the boy who broke his leg over the chair he had failed to put away
after breakfast. Her romances were the good old Nursery Legends of
Dick Whittington, the Babes in the Wood, and so forth. My dreams
became less like the columns of a provincial newspaper. I imagined
myself another Marquis of Carabas, with Rubens in boots. I made a
desert island in the garden, which only lacked the geography-book
peculiarity of "water all round" it.
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