Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City
and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called
her "energy." "My wife's splendid," he would say to his friends, "knows
the whole of London, I believe. The _people_ we have in our house!" He
would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would
retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and
two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and
went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give
in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a
rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of
dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the
children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a
supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but
was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her
there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age
a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
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