Netty stood on the doorstep of a rickety old house and nursed the baby.
She was ten years old and had the perfectly white face of a child who
had never felt any fresher air than that which blows in a London court.
It is true that the year before she had gone with her brother Ben into
the country. The Ladies' Committee of the Holiday Fund had arranged the
matter, and Netty and Ben had gone away. They had spent a whole
delicious fortnight in a place where trees waved, and the air blew
fresh, and there were lots of wildflowers to pick; and she had run about
under the trees, and slept at night in the tiniest little room in the
world, and in the cleanest bed, and had awakened each morning to hear
the doves cooing and the birds singing, and she had thought then that no
happiness could be greater than hers.
This had happened a year ago, and since then a new baby had arrived,
and the baby was rather sickly, and whenever Netty was not at school she
was lugging the baby about or trying to rock him to sleep. She was
baby's nurse, and she was not at all sorry, for she loved the baby and
the occupation gave her time to dream.
Netty had big dark-blue eyes, which showed bigger and darker than ever
in the midst of her white little face. She could talk to the baby about
the country. How often she had told him the story of that brief
fortnight!
