I must have
become a perfect nuisance to any sensible person at this period, and
indeed my father had an interview with Nurse Bundle on the subject.
"Master Reginald seems to me to be more troublesome than he used to
be, nurse," said my father.
"Indeed you say true, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, only too glad to reply;
"but it's the drawing-room and not the nursery as does it. Miss Burton
is always a begging for him to be allowed to stay up at nights and to
lunch in the dining-room, and to come down of a morning, and to have a
half-holiday in an afternoon; and, saving your better knowledge, sir,
it's a bad thing to break into the regular ways of children. It ain't
for their happiness, nor for any one else's."
"You are perfectly right, perfectly right," said my father, "and it
shall not occur again. Ah! my poor boy," he added in an irrepressible
outburst, "you suffer for lack of a mother's care. I do what I can,
but a man cannot supply a woman's place to a child."
Mrs. Bundle's feelings at this soliloquy may be imagined. "You might
have knocked me down with a feather, sir," she assured the butler
(unlikely as it seemed!) in describing the scene afterwards.
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